From: Robert Bradbury (bradbury@genebee.msu.su)
Date: Sat Apr 15 2000 - 09:03:07 MDT
On Fri, 14 Apr 2000, Spike Jones wrote:
> Robert Bradbury wrote:
>
> > I would have to think though, that scaling up the Arienne 5 or
> > getting the Energia to be more reliable would be a cheaper approach
> > than recreating the Saturn 5.
>
> Getting Energia to be more reliable? Just use the existing Russian
> rockets. The Proton is a hell of a good launcher as is. The commies
> do build a good low-cost space rocket [damn em]. spike {8-]
>
Perhaps I'm confusing the names. Their mid-size booster (the one
they use for missions to the Mir station) seems quite reliable.
There large boster (Proton/Energia?) has had quite a few failures
though. For example, I think it dumped the last Russian Mars mission
and I think that Kazakstan had launches on hold for a while because an
even more recent mission had to be aborted and there was a dispute
over who was going to pay to cleanup the trash.
I'm also under the impression that their Saturn 5 equivalent moon
rocket suffered 2-3 failures, the last of which I think took out the
launch pad and ended up being canceled entirely.
JBIS has run a few articles about the Russian space histories and
capabilities over the last several years, but I don't have them
handy.
Surely, there should be some summary on the web of the capacities
of the various launch vehicles, but the only ones I ever seem to
find when I go looking are years out of date.
Robert
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