
Why does America still use Soyuz rockets to put its astronauts in space? - known
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/10/16/why-does-america-still-use-soyuz-rockets-to-put-its-astronauts-in-space
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sitharus
I wish the article analysed the differences between the space programs in more
depth. The US space program has had several new rocket and spacecraft designs
where the Russians (and Soviets before) have concentrated on progressive
refinement.

The Soyuz rocket is a refinement of the R7 ballistic missile - the world’s
first - and the spacecraft has been continually refined since 1967. The first
stage engines still use hydrogen peroxide to spin the turbopumps as they’re
iterations on the V2’s engine.

I guess there might be something there with high tech analysis vs traditional
iterative engineering.

~~~
madeuptempacct
It is generally accepted that the USSR/Russia is more iterative in weapons
development, while trying crazy one offs now and again (high speed, high
depth, double-hull titanium submarines, supercavitating torpedoes, plasma
stealth, 3D-thrust-vectoring on fighters, PESA radar on the MIG31, etc, etc).
They keep what sticks, for example high off-bore, helmet queued IR-missile
targeting on the MIG-29 (it took a while for the US AIM-9 to catch up), but go
for the cheaper versions on everything else.

While it is a budgetary necessity now, it simply "worked" in the past.

The same can't really be said for their rockets though, Musk is going to
"crush them" to quote our friend Khruschev, and then Russia has no
technological lead left, at all. Maybe niches in cybersecurity and new nuclear
power generators, but that seems to be about it. Tragic really.

~~~
adventured
There is one other area of their economy that has gotten interesting in the
last decade. Thanks to a leap in modernization, their wheat production doubled
over ~15 years and it looks set to continue expanding. They have the potential
to be a considerable agriculture power.

Their oil industry, which used to be towering, is 'only' worth about the
annual sales of Apple, or Google + Microsoft. With their current approach to
political leadership, it's hard to imagine where the economic growth is going
to come from to enable them to devote a lot more resources to their non-
military space industry.

~~~
madeuptempacct
It's good to hear about wheat production - that wasn't exactly going well for
them after losing Ukraine.

"Their oil industry, which used to be towering, is 'only' worth about the
annual sales of Apple, or Google + Microsoft. "

This isn't a good thing though. There is no credit to be given here - it
causes an over-reliance on oil prices, and any time there is a market crash,
they slash budgets. Pretty horrible.

"With their current approach to political leadership, it's hard to imagine
where the economic growth is going to come from to enable them to devote a lot
more resources to their non-military space industry."

Yea, I actually think Putin did a good thing in cleaning up low level
corruption. But for some delusional reason I thought he would invest in
education, tech, and small business once he reduced some corruption at the low
level. That never happened. Pretty disappointing.

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wallace_f
Korolev and von Braun are the most important pioneers of space flight. Korolev
was brutalized and nearly beaten to death (he could not even turn his head to
look to the side) in his stint in the gulags resulting from false accusations;
and meanwhile the American efforts, like the Vanguard program and others,
injected so much politics, beauracracy and corruption that we were actually
losing the space race until Kennedy put a literal nazi--who had been rotting
away with nothing to do in Texas--in charge of the Apollo program.

There's often an extreme ugliness to human history that we dont want to look
at, and An Economist word salad can read relatively like a nursery rhyme. The
reality is just that simply the main obstacle to what humanity can accomplish,
and the answer to the article's question, is just _people_ screwing things up.

~~~
codeulike
_Kennedy put a literal nazi--who had been rotting away with nothing to do in
Texas--in charge of the Apollo program._

Who?

edit: Ah, this guy
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun)

~~~
mmjaa
The USA put a lot of Nazi's to use after the war.

1,600 of them went off to be part of the CIA. We can see how successful that
integration went ..

EDIT: Yes, I know, it makes you feel uncomfortable, Americans. But it is an
uncomfortable _truth_ that has to be confronted sooner or later - Nazi's
helped build the CIA.

[https://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/31/the_nazis_next_door_...](https://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/31/the_nazis_next_door_eric_lichtblau)

~~~
josefresco
Post WWII (and even before the end) the US quickly pivoted towards the "cold
war" with the Soviet Union. From the interview you linked:

"...Dulles was one of the intelligence titans of the 1950s, one of the
original cold warriors. And he was someone who believed that there were,
quote-unquote, “moderate Nazis,” his words, who the U.S. could use to its
advantage in the Cold War. And he actively recruited them himself and, in a
number of cases, intervened on their behalf when they were facing accusations
about their past, about their involvement in Nazi war crimes. And he and J.
Edgar Hoover were really the two linchpins in this, in developing this
strategy of recruiting ex-Nazis as cold warriors, as anti-Soviet assets who,
they believe, could gather intelligence for the U.S."

Dulles was not a perfect man, and holds much of the blame when it comes to
US/corporate colonialism but to suggest the CIA was "built with" Nazis is
taking it too far. To suggest that the Nazi legacy of the CIA somehow is
connected to current day abuses of power is an even further leap of logic.
Dulles saw former Nazis as valuable tools in his war/wars - there's not much
else to it.

Recommended reading if you're curious about the CIA and it's origins, and how
it effected/effects US policy: [https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Foster-Dulles-
Allen-Secret/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Foster-Dulles-Allen-
Secret/dp/0805094970)

~~~
mmjaa
>To suggest that the Nazi legacy of the CIA somehow is connected to current
day abuses of power is an even further leap of logic.

On the contrary: MK ULTRA. Agent Orange. Secret torture sites.

~~~
josefresco
Torture and abhorrent behavior is not exclusive to Nazis. How many other
intelligence agencies have used barbaric tactics to extract information to
keep their homeland safe? I just don't see the direct connection - doesn't
make it any less wrong, I just don't see the evidence that it's directly
influenced by this connection.

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Delmania
I had the opportunity to speak with a woman who works in mission control,
monitoring the electrical systems and solar panels for the ISS. She said in
her opinion, canceling the shuttle program was the right thing to do because
using a space shuttle to fly to the ISS was the equivalent of using a mercedes
to drive to the end of your driveway to get mail.

~~~
sbradford26
So the space shuttle couldn't even replace the Soyuz for taking people to the
space station and back. The Soyuz capsule stays at the space station for the
duration people are there so it can be used to get everyone back if needed.

The space shuttle has a maximum mission length of 16 days so it could not fill
that same role, while the Soyuz capsule can go about 6 months.

[https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/launch/extend_dur...](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/launch/extend_duration.html)

~~~
rsynnott
The shuttle was kind of a solution in search of a problem; the design never
really made a lot of sense in the first place. The US would almost certainly
have been better pursue a scaled-down Apollo-derivative (ie a Soyuz clone).

~~~
tw04
>The shuttle was kind of a solution in search of a problem;

I don't think that's entirely fair. At the time, when it appeared space may
become weaponized, it made a lot of sense. A craft that could potentially fly
up to space, take someone else's satellite and bring it home? Worth the cost
and then some many times over.

~~~
rsynnott
> fly up to space, take someone else's satellite and bring it home

(NB. Provided that it was in an accessible low earth orbit and that very
simple countermeasures weren't used)

I mean, realistically, putting a small bomb in each sensitive satellite would
be enough to dissuade anyone from trying this, and most sensitive satellites
wouldn't be in orbits that the shuttle could make anyway. The military
applications always seemed like the most fantastical part of the concept.

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jpatokal
This article is from October. A recent unmanned launch of Soyuz went well and
the next manned launch with ISS crew is scheduled for December 3rd.

~~~
inamberclad
Roscosmos must be pushing hard in order to pull this off. If they can't make
their launch, the current crew will still need to depart on time. Should this
happen, it'll be the first time in 18 (I think) years that the ISS has been
unmanned. The Soyuz's hydrogen peroxide supply slowly denatures, so the
spacecraft literally has an expiration date.

~~~
walkingolof
Roscosmos where very quick figuring out what went wrong and everything is
business as usual now.

[https://www.space.com/42319-soyuz-launch-abort-russia-
identi...](https://www.space.com/42319-soyuz-launch-abort-russia-identifies-
cause.html)

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HenryBemis
All very good comments from fellow HN-ers (the ones regarding the Economist's
accuracy).

My first thought on the title of the article was "if it ain't broken, don't
fix it". As it goes for 'commuting' people back and forth to ISS (and
previously to Mir - Mir means both 'World' and 'Peace' in Russian language)
Soyuz was the favorite means of transportation. I am not against upgrading,
but if it does the job, leave it alone :)

~~~
xoa
> _" if it ain't broken, don't fix it"_

Cost is always an inseparable part of the equation however. Going to space for
$10000/kg vs $5000/kg vs $1000/kg vs $500/kg all mean very different things
for what missions become feasible and the safety factor and performance of
said missions too (since the latter both have mass costs). SpaceX or BO
ultimately doing the job much more cheaply, carrying more mass, with simpler
designs made possible by modernized ME and knowledge, and that are more
adaptable to other missions (methalox for example is a favorable compromise
fuel for Mars surface launches and orbital refueling), doesn't mean Soyuz
would be "broken" sure but it will make it _obsolete_ for most of the world.
Ground manufacturing capability and best practices change too. Long term
standing still isn't a great idea.

~~~
baybal2
It all depends if you own the whole space programme. Even the $10000 vs $500
per kg difference you named will make a small difference for the cost of a
whole programme. The LV cost for a manned mission is 1/10th of the whole
launch cost.

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avmich
Interesting that USA launched people on LOX-ethanol (Mercury Redstone), LOX-
kerosene (Mercury Atlas), N2O4-Aerozine (Gemini), LOX-kerosene-LH2 (Apollo),
solids-LOX-LH2 (Shuttle) - and Russia (previously USSR) always actually used
R-7 LOX-kerosene with almost the same launch pad...

> Russia’s willingness to ferry passengers—including space tourists—gave NASA
> and other agencies a useful fallback option

Remember how much NASA opposed the Dennis Tito flight. Doesn't look like a
useful fallback.

> the date by which the three astronauts presently on the ISS must use a Soyuz
> descent vehicle before its corrosive fuel renders the craft unusable

I believe it's the fuel itself which deteriorates, not the craft. Peroxide is
slowly self-decomposing.

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habnds
kind of a disappointing article from the economist. Click-baity title with the
obvious answer in the first line of the article. They fail to directly compare
the cost per flight for shuttle v soyuz. No follow up sentence on the
possibility of actual sabotage on the soyuz return lander.

~~~
mikejb
> They fail to directly compare the cost per flight for shuttle v soyuz.

That would be a difficult but interesting comparison: You'd have to compare a
single SpaceShuttle launch with the cost for launches of 1) Soyuz crew
launches and 2) cargo launches that could be covered with the SpaceShuttle's
16t payload capacity.

~~~
wallace_f
And not to mention the article _does_ mention cost problems with the shuttle
without going into such detail--which the editors may have cut out.

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vectorEQ
"because trillions of dollars still doesn't beat russian technology"

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Sir_Cmpwn
Does anyone have a workaround for the paywall?

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24gttghh
NoScript.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Thanks!

