alternatehistory.com
Soviets in space (21)
February 1978
In late 1977, a Soviet RORSAT, designated Kosmos 954, began behaving erratically shortly after launch. Ground controllers struggled to control the spacecraft and the reactor-ejection maneuver failed. In December, the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) began planning for an uncontrolled re-entry. In January, Kosmos 954 lost all attitude control and began its descent.
The USSR remained tight-lipped throughout the crisis, but eventually confirmed the loss of Kosmos 954 and its on-board nuclear reactor. The Soviet Union assured the world that the falling spacecraft would burn up during re-entry. The U.S. took no chances and stood up a whole-of-government response.
The NSC brought together liaisons and experts from State, Defense, the CIA and the Department of Energy (DOE). DOE ran much of the search and processing through its Nuclear Emergency Support Team, or NEST. A computer contributed the operation's code name: MORNING LIGHT.
The nuclear emergency response system got its first real-world test—a tougher, more dangerous test than any drill. Kosmos 954's reactor core contained over 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium.
Three C-141 aircraft carried most of NEST's gear to a Royal Canadian Air Force base in Edmonton, Alberta. Equipment included enough photographic processing tech to increase the base's photo lab size tenfold. Another base was set up in Yellowknife. The Canadians had good nuclear detection gear, but it was designed for aerial prospecting, not debris location. State-of-the-art American instruments rode aboard Canadian aircraft.
The Kosmos blunder had far-reaching consequences.
At the time one men was deeply engaged in an overwhelming effort aiming at developing a structured Canadian space program. That man was John Herbert Chapman, already the father of Alouette, the first Canadian satellite that had made Canada the world third space power after the U.S and USSR.
At the time the Kosmos 954 disaster struck Chapman had already sold the Trudeau government a complete, highly structured space program.
The Blue Streak Agena would carry three important missions, A, B, and C.
Mission A would be launch of the Anik B communication satellites.
Mission B would carry second-generation "International Satellite for Ionospheric Studies" (ISIS) sensors either in orbit or to the American Liberty space station.
Mission C would have the Agena outfitted with the Canadian robotic arm, the Canadarm.
In the wake of Kosmos 954 Chapman tackled space debris. At the time another derelicted vehicle was becoming a threat. Skylab A certainly carried no nuclear reactor, but it was just enormous, a good 150 000 pounds of metal. As such it was quite sure to left a huge trail of debris striking the planet – but where ? The sticky point was that NASA was no longer able to control its creature – all gyroscopes were dead.
Chapman stroke of genius was to use the Canadarm to grapple the Skylab. And then Agena would ram itself into the workshop Apollo docking collar.
---------------------------------------------------------------
"Information reaching London is that the G-1-e big Russian rocket is meant to launch modular components of a large space station for collection and assembly by a space tug some 400 to 450 km above the Earth. Whether or not this is still the intention, or whether smaller modules will be launched by the Proton booster, only time will tell. At all events, the present Salyut stations are expected to continue, in some form, well into the 1980s. "
--------------------------------------------------------------
May 5, 1978
Music: The Mammas and the papas, Monday Monday
They had boarded Enterprise two weeks before. Everything was clean and neat and well packaged, although that state of thing would not last very long. For all the valiant efforts of their crews space stations tended to become messy places.
To the veteran crew the Skylab legacy was evident. A new era was dawning, that of long duration stays well past Skylab 84 days benchmark. The veteran crew was slowly outfitting Enterprise, and they had a brief thought for the pair of Soviet cosmonauts not that far away. It was a unique situation in the history of spaceflight: for the first time two space stations shared a similar inclination over the equator - 51.6 degree (in the 74-76 era Salyut 4 had had an orbital inclination similar to Skylab, but it was flying much lower and the cluster had already been abandonned at the time.)
It was a pure coincidence: NASA space station had been there because of Skylab science heritage, because there were more landmasses under its path to be observed. The Soviets, for their part, where there because of Baikonur; Salyut orbit made launches easier for them.
There was no risk, however, that the two stations ever collided; nor that a Soviet crew could ever defect to the American orbital facility, Belenko style.
Both space stations were racing around Earth like two cars racing at the Indianapolis oval track. They were at the same height, and their path crossed Earth equator at the same angle – an inclination of 51.6 degree. Yet the speedway was very long, a thousand miles long track. Simply, the space stations had been launched at the opposite ends of the oval; and since their speed and height were essentially similar, they would never catch each other. Neither crew intended to hit the brakes and wait for the adversary; space-wise, slamming the brakes meant firing a rocket motor against the orbital motion to lose height and speed, and that cost a helluva lot of propellants.
...
Down on the same orbit were the Soviets. To NASA relief a kind of new space race had started, that, perhaps someday would end on Mars surface. Truth be told, the Soviet competitor remained manned space program best driving force. The soviet crew was manning Salyut 5, an evolved model where two ships could dock, one at each end, one for the crew and the other for cargo. It was the fifth DOS space station, most of which had failed either at launch or in orbit.
After a string of failures, Almaz and Salyut reached success circa 1975 and at the very moment when emphasis shifted to the huge MKBS - making their future rather uncertain. That was, of course, before Glushko kicked Chelomei out of his empire.
Chelomei empire once consisted of its own OKB-23 bureau that build antiship missiles. In 1960 he had been given OKB-52 - Myasishchev aviation shop that rivaled Tupolev strategic bombers. Khrushchev has stopped believing in strategic aviation and, most importantly, Chelomei wisely hired his son Serguey !
Twenty years later Glushko had been given OKB-52 and made it the nucleus of his new empire, stripping down Chelomei empire of everything beside antiship missiles at OKB-23. In the process Glushko had its hands on the Proton rocket workhorse (which engines he had designed, by the way) he renamed Buran; the Almaz and Zvezda military space stations; and the TKS (now Zarya) manned ship to support them.
Because Salyut was a derivative of Almaz, and because Chertok was extremely busy with the much more important MKBS, Glushko also had Salyut returns home - Chelomei OKB-52. Under Glushko leadership, Salyut, Almaz, Almaz 35 ton derivative Zvezda, and the TKS support ship were being consolidated.
Glushko intended to build Salyut and Almaz aplenty and for many tasks.
The military stations were redirected to man-tended platforms supported by the MKBS; while Salyut was to hang on much longer, to fill the gap until the early 80's.
Some stations would be outfitted with giant foldable antennas 10 or even 30 meters in diameter; others would be tasked with remote sensing of earth and astronomy. A couple of hulls would even be loaded with kinetic projectiles to shoot American satellites and ballistic missiles. That was called Kaskad and was of uttermost screcy.
Another concept had a plain old Salyut hull modified with the MKBS docking ball, all eight docking ports of it. The modules would be only two more hulls in the production run, which would be readied for launch in case the MKBS core failed. If it did not, then the modules would officially go into mothball.
A rule of thumb with space stations was they were always build in pair; and the next generation of Salyuts (with a docking collar at both end) was no exception. There would be a Salyut 5, and it would have a twin and backup, Salyut 6. Had there been no MKBS, the two stations would have launched 5 years apart, succedding each other over the span of a decade.
Instead, once launched (in 1979) Salyut 6 would join its older sister and they would dock, forming a 40 tons spaceship matching Enterprise. To confuse the imperialists, the Orbitalniy Pilotiruemyi Eksperimentalniy Kompleks – OPSEK or Orbital Manned Assembly and Experiment Complex - would be presented as the first step in the direction of a modular orbital facility, masking the massive MKBS and its N-1 launcher.
Because Peter N. James had guessed Soviet intentions quite well – the MKBS and its military implications – OPSEK would be presented as a purely civilian program; and to make matters clear, the complex was to be called according to the russian word for peace.
It was called Mir.
In 1976 Glushko had started “operation Mir”. It was obvious the extremely complex and expensive MKBS wouldn't be ready until 1981 at best. He compared this situation with NASA, where the Enterprise module would be launched in 1978, ahead of Liberty core. In Glushko opinion, an interim space station was needed, but it would have to test module assembly in orbit. Glushko also accelerated the TKS heavy manned ship. Glushko grand scheme was to dock a TKS at both end of Mir, forming a 80 tons modular station. OPSEK was to last until the MKBS reached full operational status – probably in the late 80's.
Glushko had decided to hijack the Intercomos project; foreign cosmonauts would fly both Soyuz and TKS, to Mir, for a week up there.
Gushko "operation Mir" then expanded to the military. Just after the Apollo – Soyuz joint flight in 1976 Ustinov and Afanasyev requested both Glushko and Chertok to start studies of Skif and Kaskad concepts. Initially, the Soviet military plan was to use space-based these laser and kinetic weapons to shoot down American intercontinental ballistic missiles early in flight, when they were still moving relatively slowly. Glushko Salyut or Almaz space stations would serve as the core for either the laser-equipped Polyus spacecraft or the missile-armed Kaskad. The stations could be refueled in orbit and could house two cosmonauts for up to a week. Obviously the refueling station would be Chertok MKBS.
The killing Salyut - Kaskad early concept (Buran.ru)
The designers quickly abandoned this plan, however, and with it the notion of having cosmonauts live on board the Skif and Kaskad spacecrafts. Another major change in plan was that the Soviet Ministry of Defense determined that Soviet technology was not up to the challenge of shooting down ICBMs from space, and directed that Skif and Kaskad instead be used to disable American anti-missile satellites—which didn't yet exist, and hadn't even been approved. The MKBS always had had a military role, reaching back as far as 1962 and Korolev early sketch of the monster space station.
As for lasers, incredibly the Soviets started flying them long before Reagan "evil empire" and "star wars" 1983 speeches.
In 1977 the Beriev OKB started the design of a flying laboratory designated '1А'. The purpose was to solve the complex scientific and engineering problems regarding the creation of an airborne laser and also to facilitate research on the distribution of beams in the top layers of an atmosphere. Work on this topic occurred with wide cooperation between the enterprises and the scientific organizations of the USSR, but the basic partner OKB was TSKB Almaz headed by B.V.Bunkin. The '1A' flying laboratory first flew on 19 August 1981. The aircraft began laser tests against airborne targets in late 1983–1984 and fired against high-altitude balloons at 30–40 kilometers altitude. The plane later was used to successfully attack an airborne La-17 drone aircraft.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1865/1
In late 1977, a Soviet RORSAT, designated Kosmos 954, began behaving erratically shortly after launch. Ground controllers struggled to control the spacecraft and the reactor-ejection maneuver failed. In December, the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) began planning for an uncontrolled re-entry. In January, Kosmos 954 lost all attitude control and began its descent.
The USSR remained tight-lipped throughout the crisis, but eventually confirmed the loss of Kosmos 954 and its on-board nuclear reactor. The Soviet Union assured the world that the falling spacecraft would burn up during re-entry. The U.S. took no chances and stood up a whole-of-government response.
The NSC brought together liaisons and experts from State, Defense, the CIA and the Department of Energy (DOE). DOE ran much of the search and processing through its Nuclear Emergency Support Team, or NEST. A computer contributed the operation's code name: MORNING LIGHT.
The nuclear emergency response system got its first real-world test—a tougher, more dangerous test than any drill. Kosmos 954's reactor core contained over 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium.
Three C-141 aircraft carried most of NEST's gear to a Royal Canadian Air Force base in Edmonton, Alberta. Equipment included enough photographic processing tech to increase the base's photo lab size tenfold. Another base was set up in Yellowknife. The Canadians had good nuclear detection gear, but it was designed for aerial prospecting, not debris location. State-of-the-art American instruments rode aboard Canadian aircraft.
The Kosmos blunder had far-reaching consequences.
At the time one men was deeply engaged in an overwhelming effort aiming at developing a structured Canadian space program. That man was John Herbert Chapman, already the father of Alouette, the first Canadian satellite that had made Canada the world third space power after the U.S and USSR.
At the time the Kosmos 954 disaster struck Chapman had already sold the Trudeau government a complete, highly structured space program.
The Blue Streak Agena would carry three important missions, A, B, and C.
Mission A would be launch of the Anik B communication satellites.
Mission B would carry second-generation "International Satellite for Ionospheric Studies" (ISIS) sensors either in orbit or to the American Liberty space station.
Mission C would have the Agena outfitted with the Canadian robotic arm, the Canadarm.
In the wake of Kosmos 954 Chapman tackled space debris. At the time another derelicted vehicle was becoming a threat. Skylab A certainly carried no nuclear reactor, but it was just enormous, a good 150 000 pounds of metal. As such it was quite sure to left a huge trail of debris striking the planet – but where ? The sticky point was that NASA was no longer able to control its creature – all gyroscopes were dead.
Chapman stroke of genius was to use the Canadarm to grapple the Skylab. And then Agena would ram itself into the workshop Apollo docking collar.
---------------------------------------------------------------
"Information reaching London is that the G-1-e big Russian rocket is meant to launch modular components of a large space station for collection and assembly by a space tug some 400 to 450 km above the Earth. Whether or not this is still the intention, or whether smaller modules will be launched by the Proton booster, only time will tell. At all events, the present Salyut stations are expected to continue, in some form, well into the 1980s. "
--------------------------------------------------------------
May 5, 1978
Music: The Mammas and the papas, Monday Monday
They had boarded Enterprise two weeks before. Everything was clean and neat and well packaged, although that state of thing would not last very long. For all the valiant efforts of their crews space stations tended to become messy places.
To the veteran crew the Skylab legacy was evident. A new era was dawning, that of long duration stays well past Skylab 84 days benchmark. The veteran crew was slowly outfitting Enterprise, and they had a brief thought for the pair of Soviet cosmonauts not that far away. It was a unique situation in the history of spaceflight: for the first time two space stations shared a similar inclination over the equator - 51.6 degree (in the 74-76 era Salyut 4 had had an orbital inclination similar to Skylab, but it was flying much lower and the cluster had already been abandonned at the time.)
It was a pure coincidence: NASA space station had been there because of Skylab science heritage, because there were more landmasses under its path to be observed. The Soviets, for their part, where there because of Baikonur; Salyut orbit made launches easier for them.
There was no risk, however, that the two stations ever collided; nor that a Soviet crew could ever defect to the American orbital facility, Belenko style.
Both space stations were racing around Earth like two cars racing at the Indianapolis oval track. They were at the same height, and their path crossed Earth equator at the same angle – an inclination of 51.6 degree. Yet the speedway was very long, a thousand miles long track. Simply, the space stations had been launched at the opposite ends of the oval; and since their speed and height were essentially similar, they would never catch each other. Neither crew intended to hit the brakes and wait for the adversary; space-wise, slamming the brakes meant firing a rocket motor against the orbital motion to lose height and speed, and that cost a helluva lot of propellants.
...
Down on the same orbit were the Soviets. To NASA relief a kind of new space race had started, that, perhaps someday would end on Mars surface. Truth be told, the Soviet competitor remained manned space program best driving force. The soviet crew was manning Salyut 5, an evolved model where two ships could dock, one at each end, one for the crew and the other for cargo. It was the fifth DOS space station, most of which had failed either at launch or in orbit.
After a string of failures, Almaz and Salyut reached success circa 1975 and at the very moment when emphasis shifted to the huge MKBS - making their future rather uncertain. That was, of course, before Glushko kicked Chelomei out of his empire.
Chelomei empire once consisted of its own OKB-23 bureau that build antiship missiles. In 1960 he had been given OKB-52 - Myasishchev aviation shop that rivaled Tupolev strategic bombers. Khrushchev has stopped believing in strategic aviation and, most importantly, Chelomei wisely hired his son Serguey !
Twenty years later Glushko had been given OKB-52 and made it the nucleus of his new empire, stripping down Chelomei empire of everything beside antiship missiles at OKB-23. In the process Glushko had its hands on the Proton rocket workhorse (which engines he had designed, by the way) he renamed Buran; the Almaz and Zvezda military space stations; and the TKS (now Zarya) manned ship to support them.
Because Salyut was a derivative of Almaz, and because Chertok was extremely busy with the much more important MKBS, Glushko also had Salyut returns home - Chelomei OKB-52. Under Glushko leadership, Salyut, Almaz, Almaz 35 ton derivative Zvezda, and the TKS support ship were being consolidated.
Glushko intended to build Salyut and Almaz aplenty and for many tasks.
The military stations were redirected to man-tended platforms supported by the MKBS; while Salyut was to hang on much longer, to fill the gap until the early 80's.
Some stations would be outfitted with giant foldable antennas 10 or even 30 meters in diameter; others would be tasked with remote sensing of earth and astronomy. A couple of hulls would even be loaded with kinetic projectiles to shoot American satellites and ballistic missiles. That was called Kaskad and was of uttermost screcy.
Another concept had a plain old Salyut hull modified with the MKBS docking ball, all eight docking ports of it. The modules would be only two more hulls in the production run, which would be readied for launch in case the MKBS core failed. If it did not, then the modules would officially go into mothball.
A rule of thumb with space stations was they were always build in pair; and the next generation of Salyuts (with a docking collar at both end) was no exception. There would be a Salyut 5, and it would have a twin and backup, Salyut 6. Had there been no MKBS, the two stations would have launched 5 years apart, succedding each other over the span of a decade.
Instead, once launched (in 1979) Salyut 6 would join its older sister and they would dock, forming a 40 tons spaceship matching Enterprise. To confuse the imperialists, the Orbitalniy Pilotiruemyi Eksperimentalniy Kompleks – OPSEK or Orbital Manned Assembly and Experiment Complex - would be presented as the first step in the direction of a modular orbital facility, masking the massive MKBS and its N-1 launcher.
Because Peter N. James had guessed Soviet intentions quite well – the MKBS and its military implications – OPSEK would be presented as a purely civilian program; and to make matters clear, the complex was to be called according to the russian word for peace.
It was called Mir.
In 1976 Glushko had started “operation Mir”. It was obvious the extremely complex and expensive MKBS wouldn't be ready until 1981 at best. He compared this situation with NASA, where the Enterprise module would be launched in 1978, ahead of Liberty core. In Glushko opinion, an interim space station was needed, but it would have to test module assembly in orbit. Glushko also accelerated the TKS heavy manned ship. Glushko grand scheme was to dock a TKS at both end of Mir, forming a 80 tons modular station. OPSEK was to last until the MKBS reached full operational status – probably in the late 80's.
Glushko had decided to hijack the Intercomos project; foreign cosmonauts would fly both Soyuz and TKS, to Mir, for a week up there.
Gushko "operation Mir" then expanded to the military. Just after the Apollo – Soyuz joint flight in 1976 Ustinov and Afanasyev requested both Glushko and Chertok to start studies of Skif and Kaskad concepts. Initially, the Soviet military plan was to use space-based these laser and kinetic weapons to shoot down American intercontinental ballistic missiles early in flight, when they were still moving relatively slowly. Glushko Salyut or Almaz space stations would serve as the core for either the laser-equipped Polyus spacecraft or the missile-armed Kaskad. The stations could be refueled in orbit and could house two cosmonauts for up to a week. Obviously the refueling station would be Chertok MKBS.
The killing Salyut - Kaskad early concept (Buran.ru)
The designers quickly abandoned this plan, however, and with it the notion of having cosmonauts live on board the Skif and Kaskad spacecrafts. Another major change in plan was that the Soviet Ministry of Defense determined that Soviet technology was not up to the challenge of shooting down ICBMs from space, and directed that Skif and Kaskad instead be used to disable American anti-missile satellites—which didn't yet exist, and hadn't even been approved. The MKBS always had had a military role, reaching back as far as 1962 and Korolev early sketch of the monster space station.
As for lasers, incredibly the Soviets started flying them long before Reagan "evil empire" and "star wars" 1983 speeches.
In 1977 the Beriev OKB started the design of a flying laboratory designated '1А'. The purpose was to solve the complex scientific and engineering problems regarding the creation of an airborne laser and also to facilitate research on the distribution of beams in the top layers of an atmosphere. Work on this topic occurred with wide cooperation between the enterprises and the scientific organizations of the USSR, but the basic partner OKB was TSKB Almaz headed by B.V.Bunkin. The '1A' flying laboratory first flew on 19 August 1981. The aircraft began laser tests against airborne targets in late 1983–1984 and fired against high-altitude balloons at 30–40 kilometers altitude. The plane later was used to successfully attack an airborne La-17 drone aircraft.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1865/1
- Archibald
- Word Count: 2k