So far I understand hourly rates for flying, I think they indicate how much you have to pay in total, maintenance etc, to get 1 hour effective flight time out of the craft. Thus the cost to keep it flying. So things like storage I think would be included in this. Obviously one could create situations where it doesn't work out, but it's probably fair enough. I kind of figure the metric came in to being, because to an extent aircraft users care more about how much they effectively have to pay for the thing they really want, flying, on the ground does them no good after all.
Hm, OK.
That said, a supersonic carrier aircraft would be doing such a different mission, that even comparing it to the SR-71 doesn't work IMO.
And even if it cost the equivalent of 10 million USD per flight hour, if it is only flying for 10 minutes per launch, that's still 1.66 million USD per launch, which could be quite competitive.
Anyway, this kind of project is probably not going to come up until the 90s.
While there is a truth to this, if one only views it in that form it can give a pretty warped view of how much it actually costs to run the assets one has once they've already been developed. So I tend to personally like to keep it some what separate, a figure to take in separately from the running cost, thought of course one certainly shouldn't forget R&D, you did pay it after all.
Well, it is true that sometimes things have broad applications that you can't really think of all the ways it could be used, like pretty much all blue-sky research.
I don't think giant supersonic aircraft have such broad applications though.
- If the project works we can get rid of a small launcher that runs on rather toxic fuels. While its real world hazard level is some what relative, it's still a bit annoying and could occasionally cause some extra problems. So it would probably be better to phase it out in time.
You know, I had missed that this was aiming to replace the small launcher. That actually makes me alot more interested in this project. Not because I think it will replace the small launcher completely - the small launcher program is using recycled ICBMs and spare ICBM production, which I expect will mean it sees some sort of use into the 21st Century as at some point (which may already have happened) the missiles will start to be retired and hundreds, if not thousands of reconditioned missiles will then be available for launch use.
And burning their toxic propellants while launching things is actually one of the more environmentally friendly ways to dispose of them all.
But such a small launcher sounds much less ambitious (and thus has less technical risk), while still involving interesting work that will push forward our capabilities.
And I am in agreement with your other points.
And the small launcher runs on very toxic fuels and while admittedly this usually doesn't matter to much, I can't say that fills me with enthusiasm either. It's just kind of a fuel tech branch that I kind of want to die, especially as performance wise the fuel doesn't even give any kind of advantage beyond that you could have a rocket fueled up with it for a long time...
Hypergolics have advantages in terms of reliability (so launches are easier and require less checks before count-down starts) and density, so for a given amount of propellant you need less mass wasted on tanks and your turbopumps can be less powerful. (Indeed, hypergolics can be made without turbopumps at all and still be OK.) They are good for achieving high thrust too.
They have their place.
Gotta find something to keep the Stalingrad factory in business long term, Intercosmos helps but eventually the Germans/Indians/Chinese are going to run out of cheap and easy satellite business too.
Considering that our electronics are in broad terms competitive with the Americans and we may actually be ahead in terms of vacuum adapted electronics with all of our probe programs, our satellites are probably have fairly long service lives.
Which means that if we are running the Stalingrad factory flat out now, demand is only going to rise as our allies programs grow and as we give our manned program more than mere crumbs.
even if MKAS works which again I doubt it actually would.
I don't see any reason why it wouldn't. The thing is realistically scaled. Indeed, I'd missed that this project was specifically aiming to replace the small launchers, which I believe are lofting payloads of 1 tonne and under to LEO. That means the proposal is probably more like the Northrop Grumman Pegasus than it is the MAKS or LKS. We should be able to use modified airliners or military transports for this program.
In any case, even if the design does end up as large as the OTL MAKS proposal, the issue is not whether it will work, but whether other things are more useful investments.
So not only would a revived MKAS program have to get over the hurdle of the carrier aircraft that killed it last time
Critically, the current proposal is open to the idea of launching the new vehicle on top of a normal rocket.
If the proposal was only to try for aircraft launch, I would be against it. But since they're open to better ideas, it is fine.
If they roll well on the plane design, that's OK, if they don't get lucky and instead go for a more conventional LKS-type approach, that's fine too.
Though another way of looking at this is that in the rocket business, like in any other field, if you just rest on your laurels and do nothing... well you're certainly not going to be advancing. And iterating on relatively small budgets and seeing what comes out of it isn't the worst thing ever to do. That iteration matters can also be seen in the current rocket business, where the commercial companies if they have the money for it tend to be looking at the next system they can develop, or the next improvement they can make to their rockets. In that sense now that the RLA upgrade is done, we're currently doing nothing.
This is absolutely spot on.
IMO we need to do the bulk launch program, the hydrogen launcher program, or the re-useable launcher program purely so the engineers who designed the RLA can teach their younger colleagues how to build rockets before they retire. Skills survive best in living people. No amount of documentation can ever be as good as working with someone who knows what they are doing on a real project.
At this point, now we are less funding constrained, there are arguments for all three options here. But picking the fourth option of "none of the above" is in my view, a waste of valuable experience.
This discussion has made me more interested in the re-useable launcher project, so I lean towards that being the best bang for buck.
But the other two options have their arguments as well.
I admit I am probably least interested in the all LH2/LOX rocket, just because that is such an American idea... (Though the Soviets did have some quite interesting ideas for all LH2/LOX rockets in OTL like
the Deuteron proposal.)
Maybe when we're well into the 80s we can upgrade the light rocket but for now I just don't really see the point
I would note that from the sound of it, the re-useable program is aiming for having something that would fly in the 80s. See:
"It is believed to be possible that some form of the MKAS concept could be launched in the decade allowing space to be opened to low-cost space launch."
Also, which path are we aiming at? LEO space station, Lunar Surface/orbit base, or Mars?
IMO the political need for a space station means that is the immediate priority. We are also in desperate need of bringing our manned program up to scratch after the neglect post Lunar program abandonment. Intercosmos will include plenty of unmanned satellites, but the real propaganda value is men and women from across the CMEA working together to advance the human conquest of space. And we need good hardware to impress our allies.
I do want to do things like a series of short-duration (no more than 3 month) Lunar bases and a Mars sample return, but I don't think those are priorities as yet, they're just long term aspirations that I keep in mind when I look at the ideas our designers try to get us to fund.
Yeah it's a bit of a waste of money and a stupid idea considering that space stations specifically exist to study the properties of weightlessness. But I think the cosmonauts would love the opportunity to feel the weight again, it would really improve their quality of life. At least a habitation module?
A rotating station would let us study the impact of long term exposure to things like Lunar gravity and Martian gravity. And biological, chemical and industrial processes in the different conditions.
Would be extremely valuable, particularly since evacuating someone from a station in LEO is way easier than getting someone back from Mars.
Regards,
fasquardon
