Columbia rescue - save the space shuttle !

True. So you integrate it as quickly as possible. Because there are contingency scenarios where you've bought some time but not recovered the crew yet - such as package delivery by an alternate means,

Assuming Soyuz cannot be transported, maybe modifying SLBM's on a Boomer. Pretty hefty throw weight, and the Delta-V's look very accurate.
 
Not enough. It's got about 250 m/s, which buys you another 2 degrees--incidentally, I did my math wrong for Shuttle. Not 9.5 degrees, 4.73 degrees.

But that's the Soyuz in a regular mission profile, in which as much of its 6700kg throw weight as possible is payload, not additional thruster fuel. The Russians previously had no reason to swap out payload for fuel, but now they have an incentive to cram the module with as much fuel as can be carried. How much fuel can be stowed aboard a Soyuz, and is it enough to get at least the capsule to the Columbia, which then can become a lifeboat for 3 crew?
 
Probably because it was sufficient to point out the first resort options, not the last resort desperate options - it was, after all, an academic exercise.

For Arch's timeline here, however, it's not. Everything is on the table.

I am not talking about an option to actually save Columbia. For that they should have known, that there even WAS a problem with the TPS. (Which is the butterfly, the conditio sine qua non of TTL). I'm talking of the suggestions afterwards for further flights, AFTER the accident. If MOOSE is feasible in any way, it would be great as a last resort. If it even is very reliable, it would have been (and still would be for later programs) a much cheaper alternative to stacking another whole Shuttle for non ISS Missions or if TPS is struck my meteoroids and such after leaving the ISS.

I cannot understand why it was not even taken in consideration. It is lightweight. It should be quite cheap. It would give even a rescue option after leaving ISS. A test as a secondary payload on any mission (even commercial) to earth orbit would not be that hard (or even expensive). - Even today!
 
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I am not talking about an option to actually save Columbia. For that they should have known, that there even WAS a problem with the TPS. (Which is the butterfly, the conditio sine qua non of TTL). I'm talking of the suggestions afterwards for further flights, AFTER the accident. If MOOSE is feasible in any way, it would be great as a last resort. If it even is very reliable, it would have been (and still would be for later programs) a much cheaper alternative to stacking another whole Shuttle for non ISS Missions or if TPS is struck my meteoroids and such after leaving the ISS.

I cannot understand why it was not even taken in consideration. It is lightweight. It should be quite cheap. It would give even a rescue option after leaving ISS. A test as a secondary payload on any mission (even commercial) to earth orbit would not be that hard (or even expensive).

I misunderstood, Uli.

That's a fair point.
 
But that's the Soyuz in a regular mission profile, in which as much of its 6700kg throw weight as possible is payload, not additional thruster fuel. The Russians previously had no reason to swap out payload for fuel, but now they have an incentive to cram the module with as much fuel as can be carried. How much fuel can be stowed aboard a Soyuz, and is it enough to get at least the capsule to the Columbia, which then can become a lifeboat for 3 crew?
No additional fuel. That's what you get. They had no configuration where they could add additional fuel, since they never designed it to launch from anywhere but Baikonur on anything but Soyuz rockets. And there's not much payload on a Soyuz, either. You'd cut about 450 kg of the crew on launch, but that's it, and that only gets you another 20 m/s or so.
 
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Archibald

Banned
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Flight Day 10 [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]January 25, 2003 [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Kourou, French Guyana
[/FONT]

[FONT=Times, Times, serif][/FONT]
It was the end of an era. Within three weeks Ariane 4 and her launch complex would die together. ELA-2 would be demolished and Ariane 5 would rule - provided it overcome a turbulent youth marred by four failures in the first six years, some of them truly disturbing.
Ariane 4 by contrast remained a reliable workhorse, but it had nonetheless to go as Europe had no money to run such different launchers in parallel. So far the 144th and last of the first generation Ariane remained at the assembly stand. It was essentially complete minus the top.

Elsewhere in Kourou was a clean room with the payload, an Intelsat communication satellite. The satellite would be prepared and sealed into the payload fairing before a transfer to the launch pad. There it would meet the Ariane itself (which looked somewhat beheaded) for the final integration, and launch.
If all went well, the rocket would reach the pad on January 30, and the fairing / satellite would be integrated there on February 5 for a launch a week later.
Yet for a day now satellite integration had somewhat slowed down, if not stopped. By contrast the launch vehicle checkout and buildup was being accelerated. Ariane had lost its payload but prepared for a more exciting future. It had been said the first generation of Ariane would not end their prolific career on a boring satellite launch.


 
Looks like the Soyuz factory is far from the spaceport, meaning that the system is rail or ship transportable, so what about sending the whole Soyuz rocket to a suitable launch pad?

The problem is that the only 'suitable launch pad' is in the ex-ussr. Probably only Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

Also, theres no provision for getting soyuz rocket elements to a seaport, nor the handling facilities for middling heavy and delicate boosters.

Sure, something could be juryrigged, but by the time yoy
.negotiate among the US, russia and europe
.figure out what modifications will be needed where
.get the Colubri to e.g. Sevastapol, while carrying out modifictions to docks, the ship, launch pads at Kourou, arrange an appropriate supply of the special russian kerosene to kourou.
.getting the rocket on board the Colubri, and making it secure. Even with work down ahead of time, this will take some work.
.travel time from Sevastapol to Kourou. That will be a week or two there.
.getting the rocket off the ship to the juryrigged pad.
.fixing the unforeseen details of connexions between rocket and pad

Maybe, maybe its possible. But kourou wasnt set up to handle kerosene rocket fuel at the time. It wouldtake one of the ariane pads, i think there were two, out of service for some time. And the rush rush nature of the job means theres WAY too much chance for things to go wrong.

It would be easier to adapt a Soyuz spacecraft to an Ariane, and THAT is no easy job. Might well not be possible in the time allotted.

Ooo.. heres a really crazy idea. Launch a soyuz spacecraft on a proton rocket. That could provide enough delta v.

It would still be a rube goldberg mishmash, but at least everyone speaks the same language!
 

Archibald

Banned
Ooo.. heres a really crazy idea. Launch a soyuz spacecraft on a proton rocket. That could provide enough delta v.

Not so crazy !

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/landing-soyuz-lifeboats-in-australia-1992/

Freedom’s orbit meant that, if Soyuz-TM were launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on the normal Soyuz launch vehicle, it could not reach the U.S. station. The sprawling central Asian launch complex is located in Kazakstan at 46° north. The Soyuz launch vehicle normally propels the Soyuz spacecraft toward an orbit inclined 51.6° relative to the equator to avoid overflying China during ascent to orbit. The Soyuz ACRV would then need to change its orbital plane by a whopping 23.1° to rendezvous with Freedom. Each degree of plane change would demand hundreds of kilograms of propellants. If the Soyuz ACRV were to be launched to Freedom from Baikonur, then the larger, more powerful, and more costly four-stage Proton booster would need to do the job. Its entire fourth stage, suitable for launching spacecraft out of Earth orbit toward the moon and planets, would have to be expended to make the plane change.

See ? they would have used a Proton to launch a Soyuz from Baikonur 51.6 degree into Freedom 28.5 degree. Kind of launching the Soyuz into GEO - it says a lot about plane changes in low Earth orbit. :eek:

Icing on the cake, Proton and Soyuz already slept together in the past - in the Zond days.
 
If the time has ticked down and only 1 day of air remain, will NASA risk bring them down or have them suffocate in space? If it was my choice i would rather die a fast death by burning during reentery than suffocate
 
Not so crazy !

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/landing-soyuz-lifeboats-in-australia-1992/



See ? they would have used a Proton to launch a Soyuz from Baikonur 51.6 degree into Freedom 28.5 degree. Kind of launching the Soyuz into GEO - it says a lot about plane changes in low Earth orbit. :eek:

Icing on the cake, Proton and Soyuz already slept together in the past - in the Zond days.

Though that was with the Proton-D Variant, which used a LOX/Kerosene 4th Stage. Although they likely could rig up an adaptor to mount Soyuz atop the Briz-M 4th stage they had switched to by this time IIRC.

Plus from Baikonur, you can actually go for a 46 degree inclined orbit, though this requires flying over China - the main reason they use 51/6 degrees instead - a scenario I'd think the Chinese Government would allow given the circumstances.

In short, 15 degrees of LEO Orbital Plane Change. Difficult, but doable with what they have.


If the time has ticked down and only 1 day of air remain, will NASA risk bring them down or have them suffocate in space? If it was my choice i would rather die a fast death by burning during reentery than suffocate

Only if there's nothing left to try and this becomes they're last hope for survival. Something I don't think they'd be too willing to allow.
 
Maybe, maybe its possible. But kourou wasnt set up to handle kerosene rocket fuel at the time. It wouldtake one of the ariane pads, i think there were two, out of service for some time. And the rush rush nature of the job means theres WAY too much chance for things to go wrong.

It would be easier to adapt a Soyuz spacecraft to an Ariane, and THAT is no easy job. Might well not be possible in the time allotted.

I don't see why NASA would have to pick between these; do them both or choose which to go with only later.
 
No additional fuel. That's what you get. They had no configuration where they could add additional fuel, since they never designed it to launch from anywhere but Baikonur on anything but Soyuz rockets. And there's not much payload on a Soyuz, either. You'd cut about 450 kg of the crew on launch, but that's it, and that only gets you another 20 m/s or so.

I'm not so sure of that. If the Soyuz were to be stripped of both its orbital and decent modules, and was launched with just the instrument service module with some sort of jury rigged a supply package on top of it, that would be about 4700kg of weight to play with.
 
I'm not so sure of that. If the Soyuz were to be stripped of both its orbital and decent modules, and was launched with just the instrument service module with some sort of jury rigged a supply package on top of it, that would be about 4700kg of weight to play with.
If I recall correctly, the flight computers are in the descent module and the radars are on the orbital module. Without them, you couldn't fly the spacecraft--not without far more substantial redesign than you have time for.

EDIT: Some math:

Soyuz total mass: 6700 kg
Soyuz Delta-v: 250 m/s
Soyuz OMS ISp: 315s
Soyuz Mass Ratio: 1.085
Soyuz Fuel Available: 520 kg
Plane-change required: 9 degrees
Delta-v Required: 1208 m/s
Mass Ratio Required: 1.5
Acceptable Burnout Mass with available fuel: 1045 kg

Soyuz's service module alone masses more than 1045 kg, so even without the descent module or orbital module, it couldn't meet Shuttle from Baikonur.
 
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EDIT: Some math:

Soyuz total mass: 6700 kg
Soyuz Delta-v: 250 m/s
Soyuz OMS ISp: 315s
Soyuz Mass Ratio: 1.085
Soyuz Fuel Available: 520 kg
Plane-change required: 9 degrees
Delta-v Required: 1208 m/s
Mass Ratio Required: 1.5
Acceptable Burnout Mass with available fuel: 1045 kg

Soyuz's service module alone masses more than 1045 kg, so even without the descent module or orbital module, it couldn't meet Shuttle from Baikonur.

Did some checking around. The Soyuz Total Spacecraft Mass would be 7,220 Kg as of 2003 with the Soyuz-TMA. While the Briz-M grosses 22,170 Kg. In other words, 29,390 Kg total mass of Soyuz/Briz-M at launch. So that Briz-M had better be able to both complete LEO Insertion and manage the 15 degree change in inclination.
 
Did some checking around. The Soyuz Total Spacecraft Mass would be 7,220 Kg as of 2003 with the Soyuz-TMA. While the Briz-M grosses 22,170 Kg. In other words, 29,390 Kg total mass of Soyuz/Briz-M at launch. So that Briz-M had better be able to both complete LEO Insertion and manage the 15 degree change in inclination.
We're talking past one another, I wasn't talking about the Soyuz-on-Proton option. That's totally different. It's also not much of an option, because there wasn't going to be a Proton ready until late April 2003, outside the realm of usefulness.
 
Is there any chance that a Minotaur would be available? Wiki says that the Minotaur I (which was the only orbital version developed by 2003) had a payload of 580 kilos to a 28.5 degree orbit. Also, since it's a solid fueled rocket derived from an ICBM, one could probably be prepped for launch fairly quickly.
 
Is there any chance that a Minotaur would be available? Wiki says that the Minotaur I (which was the only orbital version developed by 2003) had a payload of 580 kilos to a 28.5 degree orbit. Also, since it's a solid fueled rocket derived from an ICBM, one could probably be prepped for launch fairly quickly.
Not a chance. There were no Minotaur launches between 2002 and 2005. And unfortunately, solid-based doesn't mean "fast-to-prepare" for multistage rockets.
 
If I recall correctly, the flight computers are in the descent module and the radars are on the orbital module. Without them, you couldn't fly the spacecraft--not without far more substantial redesign than you have time for.

So, if the Russians could jury rig a makeshift module in 2 weeks, then Soyuz might be a go. If they could not, then its out. Whether or not the Soyuz flight computer and radar can be remounted on another platform quickly - do we have any real idea how technically difficult that is?

Soyuz total mass: 6700 kg
Soyuz Delta-v: 250 m/s
Soyuz OMS ISp: 315s
Soyuz Mass Ratio: 1.085
Soyuz Fuel Available: 520 kg
Plane-change required: 9 degrees
Delta-v Required: 1208 m/s
Mass Ratio Required: 1.5
Acceptable Burnout Mass with available fuel: 1045 kg

Soyuz's service module alone masses more than 1045 kg, so even without the descent module or orbital module, it couldn't meet Shuttle from Baikonur.

This is true assuming 520kg of fuel, correct?
 
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