Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!cernvax!jon
From: jon@cernvax.UUCP (jon)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: "Beyond the Energia crisis"
Keywords: Soviet/American shuttle comparison
Message-ID: <880@cernvax.UUCP>
Date: 15 Nov 88 20:05:29 GMT
Organization: CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
Lines: 96

This is a resume of an article which appeared in the English newspaper The
Guardian  on  Tuesday  15th  November  1988.   It  was  written  by  David
Whitehouse but the article does not give  any  further  information  about
him.  Mr  Whitehouse believes that the Soviet shuttle is a planned copy of
the American shuttle and goes on to give his reasons.

He starts with a brief history of the Soviet space program.  One  thing  I
found curious was claim about the demise of the Soviet moon project.

  "The superbooster designed to put a Russian on  the  Moon  first  didn't
   work.  A  damage-limitation  exercise was started.  They didn't want to
   go to the Moon they said.  What they intended to do along was to  build
   space stations.  Curiously the West believed them."

This is the first time I have heard that  the  Russian  ever  had  serious
plans to land a man on the moon.  Is it true?

On the design of "shuttleski" he says

  "In the early Seventies many in the USSR weren't convinced that  the  US
   shuttle  would  work.  But they decided they dare not take the risk, so
   the USSR had to have one too."

  "The  shuttle  design  effort  was  centered  at  Ramenskoye   airfield,
   south-east  of  Moscow.  It  had  the  best  wind  tunnel and computing
   facilities in  the  country.  It  was  also  secure.  Work  was  spread
   between  almost  all  the  major  design  teams,  the Korolev team, the
   Glushko Bureau and the Moscow Aviation  Institute.  Just  as  NASA  had
   done  a  few  years  before,  they  went  over ever possible design and
   variation of the space shuttle and decided they could not build any  of
   them."

  "They knew that their technology was inferior to that of the US but they
   had  kept  up  making better use of the technology they had.  Now there
   was the possibility that the gap between them would be just too  great.
   There was only one possible course of action."

  "There is an office at Ramenskoye whose job it was to  obtain  all  NASA
   documents, reports, evaluations and photographs of their shuttle.  With
   such freely available, high quality data, the decision was made to  use
   it  to build a Soviet space shuttle that looked almost exactly like the
   US one.  Billions of roubles, many years and much face would be saved."

  "But there were three major problems.  The computers  available  in  the
   USSR  weren't up to the job of controlling the shuttle; they lacked the
   technology to make fused silica material used to protect the outside of
   the  US  shuttle  from heat; and they couldn't build a re-usable rocket
   motor of the power  and  reliability  of  the  three  US  shuttle  main
   engines."

  "The answer to  these  problems  was  to  abandon  the  idea  of  having
   re-usable  rockets  on  the  shuttle and place them on the booster that
   takes the shuttle into orbit.  This  has  some  design  advantages  but
   economy isn't one of them.  The computer problem had to be tolerated in
   the hope that a major  internal  effort  to  improve  the  quality  and
   reliability  of  Soviet  computers  would  be adequate.  The insulation
   problem was solved by obtaining data on how the  US  made  the  shuttle
   tiles - and eventually a sample."

He then goes on to describe the Soviet shuttle as it is now, this is  well
known  to readers of this newsgroup so I won't repeat it.  He finishes off
as follows -

  "And so today, as it heads for orbit for the first time, there  will  be
   much jubilation in the USSR.  But there will be other emotions."

  "Some will worry that it smacks a little too much of  prestige  and  not
   enough  of  function  -  a combination that lost them the Moon.  Others
   will say that they have now got a  shuttle  like  the  Americans  which
   makes  them  level  and  level is the worst possible position they will
   allow.  Yet others will wonder what use they can make of  this  vehicle
   now  that  they've  got it.  They've never been in that position before
   but this is the type of problem the Soviets are good at solving."

What I was left wondering  after  reading  this  article  is,  who  is  Mr
Whitehouse  (A  fictitious  name  maybe :-)), and where did he get all his
information.  The whole article smacks of sour grapes to me.

Anyway I've just seen the launch itself on Swiss TV ... well I didn't  see
the  shuttle  clear  the  launch tower, just a lot of smoke.  Then a quick
switch to the control room, then another switch  to  the  shuttle  gliding
into  land.  As  the  Swiss commentator said, they may be able to launch a
shuttle like NASA, but they don't how to produce good news coverage of it.

Did anyone see anything more than this?  I mean the shuttle we saw landing
might not be the same one. :-)

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|                                                                      |
|   Jon Caves         UUCP        - {uunet,...}!mcvax!cernvax!jon      |
|   Division DD,      EAN         - jon@priam                          |
|   CERN CH-1211,     EARN/BITNET - jon@cernvax                        |
|   Geneva 23,        JANET       - caves@cern.cernvm                  |
|   Switzerland.                                                       |
|                                                                      |
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