andy%aids-unix@sri-unix.UUCP (07/08/83)
From: Andy Cromarty <andy@aids-unix> The following long (1500-word) quotation is taken from "The Soviet Space Shuttle: the rumors solidify" by James E. Oberg and appeared in Vol. 1, No. 1 (June 83 issue) "Defense Systems Review", pp. 38-40, copyright (C) 1983 Cosgriff-Martin & Cutter Inc., publishers (as this was the first issue, it was being distributed free by the publisher for promotional purposes.) All emphasis appeared in the original. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Two big recent splashes in the Indian Ocean have transformed the semi-mythical "Soviet Space Shuttle" from a creature of folklore and rumor into one of hardware and clear photographs. The splashes, in June 1982 and again last March, were made by the return to Earth from orbit of one-ton lifting body payloads with the letters "CCCP" on the side: "Made in the U.S.S.R." The general (but not unanimous) evaluation of these missions is that they involved a subscale model of a future Soviet manned "space plane". For the Soviets, however, they were merely "scientific satellites" in the Cosmos series, serial numbers 1374 and 1445. Analysis of orbital tracking data released by NORAD (via the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) showed several puzzling features of these missions. First, the launch site was the small base at Kapustin Yar, on the lower Volga River (both launches occurred at night, with the splashdowns soon after dawn). Second, the vehicles flew southeast and made one orbit of Earth, firing retrorockets while passing across the Black Sea an hour and a half after liftoff. The reentry occurred over southern India and Sri Lanka, and the splashdown occurred near the Cocos Islands exactly as planned -- because a substantial recovery fleet was waiting in the target area (along with shadowing planes and ships from Australia). Other facts rapidly became known. The launch vehicle was a small IRBM-derived satellite launcher (Thor Delta in performance), so the payload was surprisingly small -- about one ton. The second flight in March coincided with the release of the Defense Department's latest edition of "The Soviet Military Threat", which included a special section on Soviet space activities. In it, the booklet disclosed that besides the small "space plane" the Soviets were also developing both a large Space Shuttle (fully equivalent to the American vehicle) and a new class of expendible launch vehicles similar to the Saturn series built by the U.S. in the 1960's. The two independent Soviet shuttle projects appear to have unique missions and to be substantially different in design philosophy than the \American Columbia Challenger/, and sister spaceships. The smaller Soviet vehicle (in many ways comparable to the USAF's X-20 "Dyna-Soar" project of the early 1960s) may in its full-size version weigh about fifteen tons and be launched by a new medium-size expendable booster now being developed. The spacecraft could carry a crew of four or five cosmonauts, including passengers, and may serve as a resupply vehicle for a large Soviet space station now being designed. Other missions, including military reconnaissance and space inspection/interdiction, are certainly feasible. On the other hand, the larger Soviet `shuttle' will probably be carried into space attached to an expendable first stage with several liquid-fuel strap-on units as well. Reportedly, it will not carry reusable cryogenic engines comparable to the Space Shuttle Main Engines, so several distinctive design features are possible. First, the spacecraft itself will be lighter in relation to its payload weight. Second, the aft end of the vehicle can be built with aerodynamic advantages in mind, providing a lift-to-drag ratio twice that of the \Columbia/ and very similar to that of the \Enterprise/ in the first drop tests in 1977 with the tail cone. Thirdly, without the need for engines at the aft end, the Soviet space engineers may have chosen to open the tail cone clamshell fashion to deploy the vehicle's payload, thus saving further on the structural complexity involved in "payload bay doors" on the top of the American space shuttle. This larger Soviet vehicle apparently already exists in at least mockup form. It has been photographed both in test stands and atop modified Bison bombers for point-to-point ferrying flights. At Ramenskoye Air Base southeast of Moscow (the Soviet version of Edwards AFB), the vehicle has been seen and assigned the designator "Ram-R". Reportedly, its dimensions are quite similar to those of America's shuttles: a length of 109 feet (compared to the US's 122 feet), a wingspan of 76 feet (nearly identical), and a fusilage diameter of 18 feet (slightly wider than the US design). Its delta wing design has a leading edge sweep of 46 degrees, again quite similar to the US vehicle. These estimates may have been refined further recently: late this March, sources claimed that a Bison with a Ram-R shuttle mounted atop it had run off the runway at Ramenskoye and been stuck in the mud for two days. This presumably gave US vehicles adequate time for high-quality photographic activity. Flight schedules remain obscure. Judging from past practice, it could take four or five years for the scaled up version of the smaller Soviet shuttle to make its appearance in orbit. The new booster which presumably will carry it will, according to the DODs [sic] report, not begin flight testing until "the 1984-87 time period", which would be consistent with the development of the manned vehicle itself. Manned drop tests could of course occur much sooner. The larger Soviet shuttle must depend on the development of the larger space booster systems, and might not be launched in this decade. These schedules are consistent with Soviet public statements about "space shuttles" in general -- in recent years they have been quite negative. The significant expenditures in developing the new "Soyuz-T" (a new manned spacecraft built in side [sic] an old Soyuz airframe, it is NOT merely a modified Soyuz) are consistent with getting five to ten years space service out of it. Cosmonauts have made exactly those kinds of statements. There are dissenters from this general analysis. One group of observers has come to believe that the Cosmos-1374 and Cosmos-1445 flights into the Indian Ocean have nothing to do with the Soviet manned space program at all, and that interpreting them as a part of the "Soviet space shuttle" may be a dangerously mistaken form of "mirror imaging". These analysts point out that Kapustin Yar has never been associated with testing of man-related hardware. They point out that a simple reentry test could more easliy have been accomplished on a suborbital lob downrange from Kapustin Yar to the standard Karaganda recovery zone or from Tyuratam downrange into the Sea of Okhotsk -- but the actual tests required the development of a unique orbital control and de-orbit propulsion system. The Soviets have only intentionally landed two earlier man-related vehicles at sea, and that was only because their lunar return trajectories made in-country landings dynamically impossible (that was not the case for 1374/1445). And the Soviets have never before bothered with "subscale models" -- they have always built full-scale mockups, flown them, and modified the next vehicles based on the results. The alternate explanation, which it is claimed accounts for these nagging enigmas, is that 1374/1445 represent a new generation of anti-fleet nuclear weapons delivery system. The module is not subscale, but is full size -- and large enough to carry a 100-kiloton thermonuclear weapon. It is designed to go into a standardized low parking orbit and then descend anywhere an American carrier task force has been targetted. The warhead must be a "maneuvering reentry vehicle" -- a MARV -- and hence needs substantial cross range to cover the whole surface of Earth between successive orbits. Therefore it would look very much like a `space shuttle' -- so much so that analysts already seeking hard evidence for the legendary Soviet shuttle would fasten onto this evidence and misinterpret it. This minority view, hopefully, is not accurate -- but disturbingly, it DOES account for more of the features of the 1374/1445 missions than does the `subscale model of a small Soviet shuttle' theory. Meanwhile, the Soviets have been diligently developing the destination for this presumed family of space shuttles: a permanent space station. The Soviets do not need such vehicles for mere economy of launch costs. Indeed, the `shuttles' will be launched on expendable boosters and even the vehicles themselves may not really be "reusable" (which eliminates the headaches of tiles, since time-tested ablative materials are entirely adequate). Their main purpose seems connected with more fully utilizing the USSR's large permanent space base now being designed. These different uses are certain to result in significantly different technological features from the familiar \Columbia/-class shuttles. Those features will appear ambiguous enough for lots of mysteries and misinterpretations in years to come as Soviet space engineers strive to bring their own shuttle vehicles on line. [end quotation] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
bernie@watarts.UUCP (07/08/83)
I also dissent with the "minority opinion" mentioned in the article, if only because the Aviation Week and Space Technology photos of the sub-scale Soviet shuttle had windows in it (which suggests that it would be a manned vehicle in ful-scale form).