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From: david@beowulf.JPL.NASA.GOV (David Smyth)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Soviet and American Shuttles
Message-ID: <3020@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 10 Oct 88 21:39:12 GMT
References: <1574@nunki.usc.edu>
Sender: news@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV
Reply-To: david@beowulf.JPL.NASA.GOV (David Smyth)
Distribution: sci.space.shuttle,sci.space
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.
Lines: 53

In article <1574@nunki.usc.edu> birenboi@sal6.usc.edu (Aaron Birenboim) writes:
>
>To say that the Soviet shuttle has no engines, however, is a misnomer.
>THE SOVIET SHUTTLE HAS JET ENGINES.  The soviet shuttle is actually a 
>full fledged PLANE.  They have flown it around, and it has the ability
>to take off from the ground, as a plane does!  No more talk about the
>soviets copying us.  They used our exterior design idea, but made
>MANY, MANY improvements to it.  By using Jet engines, re-entry is
>much safer and easier, because they can make many passes at a landing,
>and don't need so many computers calculating an optimum flight trajectory.
>They can probably fly the thing on total manual control, should
>the computers die.  By removing the bulky rocked engines, they also
>have much more room for payload, in addition to the heavier load capacity
>of the Energia system.

I sincerely doubt that this is true.

1) Why would they want to fly the thing around like an airplane? This would
require lotsa stuff completely unnnecesary for spaceflight: landing gear
retractors, juet fuel tanks, all the junk to control the jet engines, ...

2) How fast do you thin the shuttle needs to go to get enough lift to
go UP?  Right now, the shuttle decends at about 100 feet per second
throughout the re-entry: The thing does NOT fly, it drops like a brick.
The wings just increase the manoeverability.

3) The Shuttle is such a bizarre handling aircraft that pilots tend to
put it into PIO (Pilot Induced Oscillation).  The center of pitch is
several airframe lengths in front of the vehicle: when you pull back on
the stick, the craft "feels" like it begins to sink quicker, when you
push forward on the stick, it "feels" like it starts to go up!  This is
why it is NOT landed by pilots, but by the auto-land system.  I watched
the pilots try to land it on the Rockwell simulator, and I NEVER saw
anybody do it: they ALWAYS crashed.  The first landing on the runway
at Edwards by the Enterprise, in front of all the political luminaries,
was almost a disaster: they started that approach with the pilots
on the sticks, and the gound controllers had to shut them off because
they were approaching to structural limits of the airframe!  The autoland
system greased it on that time, and has hit the numbers every time since.
The pilots DO NOT land the shuttle!  I do not believe the Russians
could land theirs manually either.  The handling of both vehicles will
be similar.

4) I doubt that jet engines poweful enough to get that turkey flying
would weigh less than the SSMEs.  Also, they do NOT have air intakes
exposed, so any jet engines must be retractable: think for a moment
how much weight and bulk THAT stuff would add to the soviet shuttle.

Conclusion:  I think we will find that the soviet shuttle has only
OMS and RCS rockets, no other form of propulsion.  That does make it
simpler.  And, I'll bet a donut that it will fly with IBM 370s in
the racks, executing HAL/S software, just like ours.  JUST like
ours.