1.
Buran programme
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The Buran-class space shuttle orbiters used the expendable Energia rocket as a launch vehicle. The Buran programme was started by the Soviet Union as a response to the United States Space Shuttle program, the project was the largest and the most expensive in the history of Soviet space exploration. Development work included sending BOR-5 test vehicles on multiple sub-orbital test flights, Buran completed one unmanned orbital spaceflight in 1988 before its cancellation in 1993. Orbiter K1, which flew the test flight in 1988 was crushed in a collapse on 12 May 2002 in Kazakhstan. The OK-GLI resides in Technikmuseum Speyer, although Soviet/Russian Buran spacecraft was similar in appearance to NASAs Space Shuttle, and could similarly operate as a re-entry spaceplane, its internal and functional design was distinct. For example, the engines during launch were on the Energia rocket and were not taken into orbit by the spacecraft. Smaller rocket engines on the body provided propulsion in orbit. The Buran orbital vehicle programme was developed in response to the U. S, Space Shuttle programme, which in the 1980s raised considerable concerns among the Soviet military and especially Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov. An authoritative chronicler of the Soviet and later Russian space programmes, the Soviet government asked the TsNIIMash for an expert opinion. Institute director, Yuri Mozzhorin, recalls that for a time the institute could not envisage a civilian payload large enough to require a vehicle of that capacity. Officially, the Buran orbital vehicle was designed for the delivery to orbit and return to Earth of spacecraft, cosmonauts, before the Mriya was ready, the Myasishchev VM-T Atlant, a variant on the Soviet Myasishchev M-4 Molot bomber, fulfilled the same role. The Soviet reusable space-craft programme has its roots in the beginning of the space age. The idea of Soviet reusable space flight is very old, though it was neither continuous, before Buran, no project of the programme reached production. The idea saw its first iteration in the Burya high-altitude jet aircraft, several test flights are known, before it was cancelled by order of the Central Committee. The Burya had the goal of delivering a nuclear payload, presumably to the United States, the cancellation was based on a final decision to develop ICBMs. The next iteration of the idea was Zvezda from the early 1960s, decades later, another project with the same name was used as a service module for the International Space Station. After Zvezda, there was a hiatus in reusable projects until Buran, the development of the Buran began in the early 1970s as a response to the U. S. Soviet officials were concerned about a military threat posed by the U. S
2.
Paris Air Show
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The Paris Air Show claims to be the worlds calendar-oldest air show. Established in 1909, it is held every odd year at Le Bourget Airport in north Paris. The 2015 Paris Air Show, from 15–21 June 2015, became the 51st, the format is similar to the Farnborough International Airshow in Britain and the ILA Berlin Air Show, both of which are staged in alternate years to the Paris show. The Paris event starts with four days closed to the general public. The Paris Air Show is organised by the French aerospace industrys primary representative body, according to GIFAS, the 2011 Paris show attracted 151,500 professional visitors and 204,000 members of the general public, and 3,250 journalists from 80 countries. It is a commercial event, with a major purpose being to demonstrate military. It claims to be the most prestigious aircraft exposition in the world, major aircraft sales contracts are announced by manufacturers during the show. All major international manufacturers, as well as representatives of the forces of many countries. The Paris Air Show traces its history back to the first decade of the 20th century, in 1908 a section of the Paris Motor Show was dedicated to aircraft. The following year, an air show was held at the Grand Palais from 25 September to 17 October, during which 100,000 visitors turned out to see products. There were four further shows before the First World War, the show restarted in 1919, and from 1924 it was held every two years before being interrupted again by the Second World War. It restarted again in 1946 and since 1949, has held in every odd year. The air show continued to be held at the Grand Palais, in 1953, the show was relocated from the Grand Palais to Le Bourget. Since the 1970s, the show emerged as the international reference of the aeronautical sector. Among major accidents, there were two crashes of Convair B-58 Hustler bombers, in 1961 and 1965, at the Paris Air Show on June 3,1973, the second Tupolev Tu-144 production aircraft crashed during its display. It stalled while attempting a rapid climb, the cause of this accident remains controversial. A Mikoyan MiG-29 crashed during a flight with no loss of life. The then Soviet space shuttle Buran and its aircraft the Antonov An-225 were displayed
3.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
4.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
5.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
6.
GRAU
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The Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation is a department of the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is subordinate to the Chief of Armament and Munition of the Russian Armed Forces, the organization dates back to 1862 when it was established under the name Главное артиллерийское управление. The R from rockets was added to the title in 1960, in particular, the GRAU is responsible for assigning GRAU indices to Russian army munitions and equipment. As of March 2014, the current Chief of the GRAU is Lieutenant General Nikolay Parshin, GRAU indices are of the form <number> <letter> <number>, with the optional suffix <letter> <number>. A specially assigned codename may follow the index, for example, «2 S19 Msta-S», the 2S19 Msta self-propelled howitzer. Several common misconceptions surround the scope and originating body of these indices, the GRAU designation is not an industrial designation, nor is it assigned by the design bureau. In addition to its GRAU designation, a piece of equipment could have a design name, an industrial name. The first part of a GRAU index is a number indicating which of the main categories of equipment a given item belongs to. The second part, a Cyrillic character, indicates the subcategory, the third part, a number, indicates the specific model. The optional suffix can be used to differentiate variants of the same model. ru and it has been released under the GFDL by the copyright holder. Dictionary of GRAU designations at aviation. ru Lennox, Duncan
7.
Serial code
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A serial code is a unique identifier assigned incrementally or sequentially to an item. It is also called a number, although it may be a character string that includes letters and other typographical symbols. Serial numbers identify otherwise identical individual units with many, obvious uses, Serial numbers are a deterrent against theft and counterfeit products, as they can be recorded, and stolen or otherwise irregular goods can be identified. Banknotes and other documents of value bear serial numbers to assist in preventing counterfeiting and tracing stolen ones. They are valuable in quality control, as once a defect is found in the production of a batch of product. Serial numbers may be used to identify individual physical or intangible objects, the purpose and application is different. A software serial number, otherwise called product key, is not embedded in the software. The software will function if a potential user enters a valid product code. The vast majority of codes are rejected by the software. If an unauthorised user is found to be using the software, the term serial number is sometimes used for codes which do not identify a single instance of something. It takes its name from the library use of the word serial to mean a periodical. Certificates and certificate authorities are necessary for use of cryptography. These depend on applying mathematically rigorous serial numbers and serial number arithmetic, the term serial number is also used in military formations as an alternative to the expression service number. Because of this, the number is sometimes called a tail number. LZ548/G—the prototype de Havilland Vampire jet fighter, or ML926/G—a de Havilland Mosquito XVI experimentally fitted with H2S radar, the serial number follows the aircraft throughout its period of service. In 2009 the U. S. FDA published draft guidance for the industry to use serial numbers on prescription drug packages. This measure will enhance the traceability of drugs and help to prevent counterfeiting, Serial numbers are often used in network protocols. However, most sequence numbers in computer protocols are limited to a number of bits
8.
Spaceplane
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A spaceplane is an aerospace vehicle that operates as an aircraft in Earths atmosphere, as well as a spacecraft when it is in space. Typically, it takes the form of a spacecraft equipped with wings, the propulsion to reach space may be purely rocket based or may use the assistance of airbreathing jet engines. The spaceflight is then followed by an unpowered glide return to landing, all five are considered rocket gliders. As of 2015, only these aircraft and rockets have succeeded in reaching space, three are vertical takeoff horizontal landing vehicles relying upon rocket lift for the ascent phase in reaching space and atmospheric lift for reentry, descent and landing. Of the five vehicles, three have been piloted by astronauts, with the Buran and X-37 flying unmanned missions, significant features distinguish spaceplanes from spacecraft. All aircraft utilize aerodynamic surfaces in order to generate lift, for spaceplanes a variety of wing shapes can be used. Delta wings are common, but straight wings, lifting bodies, typically the force of lift generated by these surfaces is many times that of the drag that they induce. The Space Shuttle thermal protection system, for example, protects the orbiter from surface temperatures that could reach as high as 1,650 °C. A spaceplane operates as an aircraft in Earths atmosphere, Aircraft may land on firm runways, helicopter landing pads, or even water, snow or ice. To land, the airspeed and the rate of descent are reduced such that the aircraft descends at a slow rate to allow for a gentle touch down. Landing is accomplished by slowing down and descending and this speed reduction is accomplished by reducing thrust and/or inducing a greater amount of drag using flaps, landing gear or speed brakes. Splashdown is a technical feat to accomplish, requiring only the deployment of a parachute. Project Geminis original concept design was as a spaceplane, with paraglider, however, this concept was abandoned in favor of parachute splashdowns, because of expensive technical failures during testing and development. Whereas Project Geminis splashdown parachutes took only 5 months to develop in 1963, all spaceplanes to date have used rocket engines with chemical fuels. As the orbital insertion burn has to be done in space, a difference between rocket based and air-breathing aerospace plane launch systems is that aerospace plane designs typically include minimal oxidizer storage for propulsion. Air-breathing aerospace plane designs include engine inlets so they can use oxygen for combustion. Since the mass of the oxidizer is, at takeoff, the single largest mass of most rocket designs, types of air breathing engines proposed for spaceplanes include scramjet, liquid air cycle engines, precooled jet engines, pulse detonation engine and ramjets. Some engine designs combine several types of features into a combined cycle
9.
Spacecraft
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A spacecraft is a vehicle, or machine designed to fly in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, planetary exploration, on a sub-orbital spaceflight, a spacecraft enters space and then returns to the surface, without having gone into an orbit. For orbital spaceflights, spacecraft enter closed orbits around the Earth or around other celestial bodies, robotic spacecraft used to support scientific research are space probes. Robotic spacecraft that remain in orbit around a body are artificial satellites. Only a handful of interstellar probes, such as Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, orbital spacecraft may be recoverable or not. By method of reentry to Earth they may be divided in non-winged space capsules, Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957, the launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments, while the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the Space Age. Apart from its value as a technological first, Sputnik 1 also helped to identify the upper atmospheric layers density and it also provided data on radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere. Pressurized nitrogen in the satellites false body provided the first opportunity for meteoroid detection, Sputnik 1 was launched during the International Geophysical Year from Site No. 1/5, at the 5th Tyuratam range, in Kazakh SSR. The satellite travelled at 29,000 kilometers per hour, taking 96.2 minutes to complete an orbit and this altitude is called the Kármán line. In particular, in the 1940s there were several test launches of the V-2 rocket, as of 2016, only three nations have flown manned spacecraft, USSR/Russia, USA, and China. The first manned spacecraft was Vostok 1, which carried Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, there were five other manned missions which used a Vostok spacecraft. The second manned spacecraft was named Freedom 7, and it performed a sub-orbital spaceflight in 1961 carrying American astronaut Alan Shepard to an altitude of just over 187 kilometers, there were five other manned missions using Mercury spacecraft. Other Soviet manned spacecraft include the Voskhod, Soyuz, flown unmanned as Zond/L1, L3, TKS, China developed, but did not fly Shuguang, and is currently using Shenzhou. Except for the shuttle, all of the recoverable manned orbital spacecraft were space capsules. Manned space capsules The International Space Station, manned since November 2000, is a joint venture between Russia, the United States, Canada and several other countries, some reusable vehicles have been designed only for manned spaceflight, and these are often called spaceplanes. The first example of such was the North American X-15 spaceplane, the first reusable spacecraft, the X-15, was air-launched on a suborbital trajectory on July 19,1963. The first partially reusable spacecraft, a winged non-capsule, the Space Shuttle, was launched by the USA on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarins flight
10.
Energia
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Energia was a Soviet rocket that was designed by NPO Energia to serve as a heavy-lift expendable launch system as well as a booster for the Buran spacecraft. Control system main developer enterprise was the NPO Electropribor, the Energia used four strap-on boosters each powered by a four-chamber RD-170 engine burning kerosene/LOX, and a central core stage with 4 one-chamber RD-0120 engines fueled by liquid hydrogen/LOX. The rocket had the capacity to place about 100 tonnes in Low Earth orbit, up to 20 tonnes to geostationary orbit, work on the Energia/Buran system began in 1976 after the decision was made to cancel the unsuccessful N1. The cancelled N1 rocket-based Manned Lunar Launch Facilities and Infrastructure were used for Energia, Energia also replaced the Vulkan concept, which was a design based on the Proton and using the same hypergolic propellants, but much larger and more powerful. The Vulkan designation was given to a variation of the Energia which has eight boosters. This configuration required the addition of a stage to perform the final orbital insertion. Due to the termination of the Buran programme the Energia program was concluded after only two launches, and further the payload on the first launch didnt perform the final boost properly, the Energia was first test-launched on 15 May 1987, with the Polyus spacecraft as the payload. The intended orbit was altitude 280 km, inclination 64. 6°, the two stages of the Energia launcher functioned as designed, but due to a software error in its attitude control system, Polyus orbital insertion motor failed to inject the payload into orbit. Instead, the Polyus reentered the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, the second flight, and the first one where payload successfully reached orbit, was launched on 15 November 1988. This mission launched the unmanned Soviet Shuttle vehicle, Buran, at apogee, the Buran spacecraft made a 66.7 m/s burn to reach a final orbit of 251 km x 263 km. Production of Energia rockets ended with the fall of the Soviet Union, ever since, there have been persistent rumors of the renewal of production, but given the current political realities, that is highly unlikely. While the Energia is no longer in production, the Zenit boosters are still in production, the four strap-on liquid-fuel boosters, which burned kerosene and liquid oxygen, were the basis of the Zenit rocket which used the same engines. The engine is the four combustion chamber RD-170 and its derivative, the RD-171, is still used on the Zenit rocket. In August 2016, plans were announced to develop a super heavy-lift launch vehicle from existing Energia components instead of pushing the less-powerful Angara A5V project, three major variants were conceptualized after the original configuration, each with vastly different payloads. The Energia M was the smallest design configuration, the number of Zenit boosters was reduced from four to two, and instead of four RD-0120 engines in the core, it had only one. It was designed to replace the Proton rocket, but lost the 1993 competition to the Angara rocket, Energia II, named Uragan, was a rocket proposed to be fully reusable with the design feature to land on a conventional airfield. S. The Energia II core as proposed would be capable of re-entering and gliding to a landing, the final unflown configuration was also the largest. With eight Zenit booster rockets and an Energia-M core as the upper stage, the development of rocket-carrier Vulcan and the refurbishment of the Energia launch pad for its launches was in progress in 1990-1993
11.
Coordinated Universal Time
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Coordinated Universal Time, abbreviated to UTC, is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is within about 1 second of mean time at 0° longitude. It is one of closely related successors to Greenwich Mean Time. For most purposes, UTC is considered interchangeable with GMT, the first Coordinated Universal Time was informally adopted on 1 January 1960. This change also adopted leap seconds to simplify future adjustments, a number of proposals have been made to replace UTC with a new system that would eliminate leap seconds, but no consensus has yet been reached. Leap seconds are inserted as necessary to keep UTC within 0.9 seconds of universal time, see the Current number of leap seconds section for the number of leap seconds inserted to date. The official abbreviation for Coordinated Universal Time is UTC and this abbreviation arose from a desire by the International Telecommunication Union and the International Astronomical Union to use the same abbreviation in all languages. English speakers originally proposed CUT, while French speakers proposed TUC, the compromise that emerged was UTC, which conforms to the pattern for the abbreviations of the variants of Universal Time. Time zones around the world are expressed using positive or negative offsets from UTC, the westernmost time zone uses UTC−12, being twelve hours behind UTC, the easternmost time zone, theoretically, uses UTC+12, being twelve hours ahead of UTC. In 1995, the nation of Kiribati moved those of its atolls in the Line Islands from UTC-10 to UTC+14 so that the country would all be on the same day. UTC is used in internet and World Wide Web standards. The Network Time Protocol, designed to synchronise the clocks of computers over the internet, computer servers, online services and other entities that rely on having a universally accepted time use UTC as it is more specific than GMT. If only limited precision is needed, clients can obtain the current UTC from a number of official internet UTC servers, for sub-microsecond precision, clients can obtain the time from satellite signals. UTC is also the standard used in aviation, e. g. for flight plans. Weather forecasts and maps all use UTC to avoid confusion about time zones, the International Space Station also uses UTC as a time standard. Amateur radio operators often schedule their radio contacts in UTC, because transmissions on some frequencies can be picked up by many time zones, UTC is also used in digital tachographs used on large goods vehicles under EU and AETR rules. UTC divides time into days, hours, minutes and seconds, days are conventionally identified using the Gregorian calendar, but Julian day numbers can also be used. Each day contains 24 hours and each hour contains 60 minutes, the number of seconds in a minute is usually 60, but with an occasional leap second, it may be 61 or 59 instead
12.
Baikonur Cosmodrome
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Baikonur Cosmodrome is a spaceport located in southern Kazakhstan. It is the worlds first and largest operational space launch facility, the spaceport is located in the desert steppe of Baikonur, about 200 kilometres east of the Aral Sea and north of the river Syr Darya. It is near the Tyuratam railway station and is about 90 metres above sea level, currently leased by the Kazakh Government to Russia until 2050, the spaceport is managed jointly by the Roscosmos State Corporation and the Russian Aerospace Forces. The shape of the area leased is an ellipse, measuring 90 kilometres east–west by 85 kilometres north–south, with the cosmodrome at the centre and it was originally built by the Soviet Union in the late 1950s as the base of operations for the Soviet space program. Under the current Russian space program, Baikonur remains a busy spaceport, with commercial, military. All manned Russian spaceflights are launched from Baikonur, both Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, and Vostok 1, the first manned spaceflight, were launched from Baikonur. The launch pad used for missions was renamed Gagarins Start in honor of Russian Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, pilot of Vostok 1. The Soviet government issued the decree for Scientific Research Test Range No.5 on 12 February 1955 and it was actually founded on 2 June 1955, originally a test center for the worlds first intercontinental ballistic missile, the R-7 Semyorka. NIIP-5 was soon expanded to include facilities for space flights. The site was selected by a led by Gen. Vasily Voznyuk, influenced by Sergey Korolyov, the Chief Designer of the R-7 ICBM. It had to be surrounded by plains, as the control system of the rocket required receiving uninterrupted signals from ground stations hundreds of kilometres away. Additionally, the trajectory had to be away from populated areas. Also, it is an advantage to place a space launch site closer to the equator, taking these constraints into consideration, the commission chose Tyuratam, a village in the heart of the Kazakh Steppe. A supporting town was built around the facility to provide housing, schools and it was raised to city status in 1966 and named Leninsk. The American U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance plane found and photographed the Tyuratam missile test range for the first time on 5 August 1957, there are conflicting sources about origins of the name Baikonur. Other sources state that Baikonur was name of the Tyuratam region even before the cosmodrome existed, the main cosmodrome-supporting town Leninsk was renamed to Baikonur on 20 December 1995 by Boris Yeltsin. In 1997, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation changed the path and removed the ejected rocket stages near Nyurbinsky District. Scientific literature collected enough data that confirmed adverse effects of rockets on environment, heptyl, or UDMH, a fuel used in Russian rocket engines, is considered to be highly toxic
13.
Baikonur Cosmodrome Site 110
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Site 110 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome is a launch facility which was used by the N1 rocket during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and by the Energia rocket during the 1980s. Site 110 consists of a two pads, The right pad, called 110/38 or 110R, was completed first. It was followed by the left pad, called 110/37 or 110L, the complex was built in the 1960s as part of the Soviet manned lunar programme, for use by the N1 rocket. A total of five launches were made from the complex, Four N1 launches as well as one Energia launch carrying a Buran spaceplane, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union the Energia and Buran programmes were cancelled, and the complex was abandoned. Site 110 was intended as the site for manned lunar landing missions using the Soyuz 7K-L3 spacecraft. The N1 made four flights, all of which were launched from Site 110, the first launch from the complex occurred from Site 110/38 on 21 February 1969, and was followed by another launch from the same pad on 3 July 1969. During the second launch the number 8 engine exploded a quarter of a second after liftoff, starting a fire at the base of the rocket. The rocket cleared the tower but by 12 seconds into the flight the fire had caused all but one of the engines to fail. The resulting explosion destroyed the right pad, shattered windows six kilometres from the pad and it took over eighteen months to rebuild the pad. N1 launches resumed on 26 June 1971, with the first from the left pad, following its failure, and the failure of another launch on 23 November 1972, the development N1 was abandoned. Both N1 pads at Site 110 were then rebuilt for launching Energia rockets, the two rotating service towers on both pads were reduced in height by 60 metres to match the shorter stack height of the Energia rocket. A third pad was constructed from the ground up at Site 250 for testing, the first flight on 15 May 1987 was made from Site 250, and the second flight from Site 110/37. The only Energia launch from Site 110 occurred at 03,00 UTC on 15 November 1988, today both launch pads at Site 110 are still standing, but have fallen into disrepair. Site 200/40, a Proton launch complex, had also been under consideration
14.
Launch vehicle
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In spaceflight, a launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket used to carry a payload from Earths surface into outer space. A launch system includes the launch vehicle, the launch pad, Earth orbital launch vehicles typically have at least two stages, and sometimes as many as four or more. Expendable launch vehicles are designed for one-time use and they usually separate from their payload and disintegrate during atmospheric reentry. In contrast, reusable vehicles are designed to be recovered intact. The Space Shuttle was a part of a vehicle with components used for multiple orbital spaceflights. SpaceX has developed a rocket launching system to successfully bring back a part—the first stage—of their Falcon 9 and launch it again. A fully reusable VTVL design is planned for all parts of the ITS launch vehicle, Launch vehicles are often classified by the amount of mass they can carry into orbit. For example, a Proton rocket can lift 22,000 kilograms into low Earth orbit, Launch vehicles are also characterized by their number of stages. Rockets with as many as five stages have been successfully launched, additionally, launch vehicles are very often supplied with boosters supplying high early thrust, normally burning with other engines. Boosters allow the engines to be smaller, reducing the burnout mass of later stages to allow larger payloads. Other frequently reported characteristics of vehicles are the launching nation or space agency. For example, the European Space Agency is responsible for the Ariane V, many launch vehicles are considered part of a historical line of vehicles of same or similar name, e. g. the Atlas V is the latest Atlas rocket. A small-lift launch vehicle is capable of lifting up to 2,000 kg of payload into low Earth orbit, a medium-lift launch vehicle is capable of lifting 2,000 to 20,000 kg of payload into LEO. A heavy-lift launch vehicle is capable of lifting 20,000 to 50,000 kg of payload into LEO, a super-heavy lift vehicle is capable of lifting more than 50,000 kg of payload into LEO. It refers to its 1,500 kg to LEO Vega launch vehicle as light lift, sounding rockets have long been used for brief, inexpensive unmanned space and microgravity experiments. Current human-rated suborbital launch vehicles include SpaceShipOne and the upcoming SpaceShipTwo, minimizing air drag requires a reasonably high ballistic coefficient, a ratio of length to diameter greater than ten. This generally results in a vehicle that is at least 20 m long. Leaving the atmosphere as early on in the flight as possible provides a velocity loss due to air drag of around 300 m/s, Launch vehicles of sufficient size are capable of launching payloads smaller than their orbital capability, to the Moon or beyond
15.
Takeoff and landing
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Aircraft can have different ways to take off and land. Conventional airplanes accelerate along the ground until sufficient lift is generated for takeoff, some airplanes can take off at low speed, this being a short takeoff. Some aircraft such as helicopters and Harrier Jump Jets can take off, rockets also usually take off vertically, but some designs can land horizontally. Takeoff is the phase of flight in which an aircraft goes through a transition from moving along the ground to flying in the air, for balloons, helicopters and some specialized fixed-wing aircraft, no runway is needed. Takeoff is the opposite of landing, Landing is the last part of a flight, where a flying aircraft or spacecraft returns to the ground. When the flying object returns to water, the process is called alighting, although it is commonly called landing, a normal aircraft flight would include several parts of flight including taxi, takeoff, climb, cruise, descent and landing. STOL is an acronym for short take-off and landing, aircraft with short runway requirements. CATOBAR is a used for the launch and recovery of aircraft from the deck of an aircraft carrier. Under this technique, aircraft are launched using a catapult and land on the ship using arrestor wires, although this system is more costly than alternative methods, it provides greater flexibility in carrier operations, since it allows the vessel to support conventional aircraft. Alternate methods of launch and recovery can only use aircraft with STOVL or STOBAR capability, STOBAR is a system used for the launch and recovery of aircraft from the deck of an aircraft carrier, combining elements of both STOVL and CATOBAR. It is also used for the upcoming Tier 1b SpaceShipTwo/WhiteKnightTwo combination, a prominent example of its use was the North American X-15 program. In these examples the space craft are carried to altitude on a ship before launch. The failed proposals for NASA Space Shuttle replacements, Rockwell X-30 NASP used this mode of operation but were conceived as single stage to orbit. The Lynx rocketplane is a suborbital HTHL spaceplane that was slated to begin flight testing in late 2011. Reaction Engines Skylon, a descendant of the 1980s British HOTOL design project, is an HTHL spaceplane currently in the early stages of development in the United Kingdom. An early example was the 1960s Northrop HL-10 atmospheric test aircraft where the HL stands for Horizontal Lander, different terms are used for takeoff and landing depending on the source of thrust used. VTVL uses rockets, whereas VTOL uses air, propelled via some kind of rotor system, VTOL is an acronym for vertical take-off and landing aircraft. This classification includes fixed-wing aircraft that can hover, take off and land vertically as well as helicopters and other aircraft with powered rotors, the terminology for spacecraft and rockets is VTVL
16.
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26,1991. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and that evening at 7,32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag. Previously, from August to December, all the individual republics, the week before the unions formal dissolution,11 republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol formally establishing the CIS and declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR also signalled the end of the Cold War, on the other hand, only the Baltic states have joined NATO and the European Union. Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on March 11,1985, Gorbachev, aged 54, was the youngest member of the Politburo. His initial goal as general secretary was to revive the Soviet economy, the reforms began with personnel changes of senior Brezhnev-era officials who would impede political and economic change. On April 23,1985, Gorbachev brought two protégés, Yegor Ligachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, into the Politburo as full members. He kept the power ministries happy by promoting KGB Head Viktor Chebrikov from candidate to full member and this liberalisation, however, fostered nationalist movements and ethnic disputes within the Soviet Union. Under Gorbachevs leadership, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1989 introduced limited competitive elections to a new central legislature, in May 1985, Gorbachev delivered a speech in Leningrad advocating reforms and an anti-alcohol campaign to tackle widespread alcoholism. Prices of vodka, wine, and beer were raised in order to make these drinks more expensive and a disincentive to consumers, unlike most forms of rationing intended to conserve scarce goods, this was done to restrict sales with the overt goal of curtailing drunkenness. Gorbachevs plan also included billboards promoting sobriety, increased penalties for public drunkenness, however, Gorbachev soon faced the same adverse economic reaction to his prohibition as did the last Tsar. The disincentivization of alcohol consumption was a blow to the state budget according to Alexander Yakovlev. Alcohol production migrated to the market, or through moonshining as some made bathtub vodka with homegrown potatoes. The purpose of these reforms, however, was to prop up the centrally planned economy, unlike later reforms. The latter, disparaged as Mr Nyet in the West, had served for 28 years as Minister of Foreign Affairs, gromyko was relegated to the largely ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, as he was considered an old thinker. In the fall of 1985, Gorbachev continued to bring younger, at the next Central Committee meeting on October 15, Tikhonov retired from the Politburo and Talyzin became a candidate. Finally, on December 23,1985, Gorbachev appointed Yeltsin First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party replacing Viktor Grishin, Gorbachev continued to press for greater liberalization. The CTAG Helsinki-86 was founded in July 1986 in the Latvian port town of Liepāja by three workers, Linards Grantiņš, Raimonds Bitenieks, and Mārtiņš Bariss and its name refers to the human-rights statements of the Helsinki Accords
17.
Kazakhstan
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Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in northern Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Kazakhstan is the worlds largest landlocked country, and the ninth largest in the world, Kazakhstan is the dominant nation of Central Asia economically, generating 60% of the regions GDP, primarily through its oil/gas industry. It also has vast mineral resources, Kazakhstan is officially a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. Kazakhstan shares borders with Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, the terrain of Kazakhstan includes flatlands, steppe, taiga, rock canyons, hills, deltas, snow-capped mountains, and deserts. Kazakhstan has an estimated 18 million people as of 2014, Given its large area, its population density is among the lowest. The capital is Astana, where it was moved in 1997 from Almaty, the territory of Kazakhstan has historically been inhabited by nomadic tribes. This changed in the 13th century, when Genghis Khan occupied the country as part of the Mongolian Empire, following internal struggles among the conquerors, power eventually reverted to the nomads. By the 16th century, the Kazakh emerged as a distinct group, the Russians began advancing into the Kazakh steppe in the 18th century, and by the mid-19th century, they nominally ruled all of Kazakhstan as part of the Russian Empire. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, and subsequent civil war, the territory of Kazakhstan was reorganised several times, in 1936, it was made the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan has worked to develop its economy, especially its dominant hydrocarbon industry. Kazakhstans 131 ethnicities include Kazakhs, Russians, Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Germans, Tatars, the Kazakh language is the state language, and Russian has equal official status for all levels of administrative and institutional purposes. The name Kazakh comes from the ancient Turkic word qaz, to wander, the name Cossack is of the same origin. The Persian suffix -stan means land or place of, so Kazakhstan can be translated as land of the wanderers. Kazakhstan has been inhabited since the Neolithic Age, the regions climate, archaeologists believe that humans first domesticated the horse in the regions vast steppes. Central Asia was originally inhabited by the Scythians, the Cuman entered the steppes of modern-day Kazakhstan around the early 11th century, where they later joined with the Kipchak and established the vast Cuman-Kipchak confederation. Under the Mongol Empire, the largest in history, administrative districts were established. These eventually came under the rule of the emergent Kazakh Khanate, throughout this period, traditional nomadic life and a livestock-based economy continued to dominate the steppe. Nevertheless, the region was the focus of ever-increasing disputes between the native Kazakh emirs and the neighbouring Persian-speaking peoples to the south, at its height the Khanate would rule parts of Central Asia and control Cumania
18.
Hangar
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A hangar is a closed building structure to hold aircraft, spacecraft or tanks in protective storage. Most hangars are built of metal, but other such as wood. The word hangar comes from Middle French hanghart, of Germanic origin, from Frankish *haimgard, from *haim, hangars are used for protection from the weather, direct sunlight, maintenance, repair, manufacture, assembly and storage of aircraft on airfields, aircraft carriers and ships. The Wright brothers stored and repaired their aircraft in a wooden hangar constructed in 1902 at Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina for their glider, after completing design and construction of the Wright Flyer in Ohio, the brothers returned to Kill Devil Hill only to find their hangar damaged. They repaired the structure and constructed a new workshop while they waited for the Flyer to be shipped, bleriot was in a race to be the first man to cross the English Channel in a heavier-than-air aircraft and set up his headquarters in the unused shed. In Britain, the earliest aircraft hangars were known as aeroplane sheds and these were built in 1910 for the Bristol School of Flying and are now Grade II* Listed buildings. Examples of the latter survive at Farnborough, Filton and Montrose airfields, during World War I, other standard designs included the RFC General Service Flight Shed and the Admiralty F-Type of 1916, the General Service Shed and the Handley Page aeroplane shed. Airship hangars or airship sheds are generally larger than conventional aircraft hangars, most early airships used hydrogen gas to provide them with sufficient buoyancy for flight, so their hangars had to provide protection from stray sparks to keep the gas from exploding. Hangars that held several airships were at risk from chain-reaction explosions, for this reason, most hangars for hydrogen-based airships were built to house only one or two such craft. During the Golden Age of airship travel from 1900, mooring masts and sheds were constructed to build, steel rigid airship hangars are some of the largest in the world. Hangar 1, Lakehurst, is located at Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst, the structure was completed in 1921 and is typical of airship hangar designs of World War I. The site is best known for the Hindenburg disaster, when on May 6,1937, Hangar No.1 at Lakehurst was used to build and store the American USS Shenandoah. The hangar also provided service and storage for the airships USS Los Angeles, Akron, Macon, as well as the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg. The largest hangars ever built include the Goodyear Airdock measuring 1, 175x325x211 feet, the Goodyear Airdock, is in Akron, Ohio and the structure was completed on November 25,1929. The Airdock was used for the construction of the USS Akron and her sister ship, Hangar One at Moffett Federal Field, is located in Mountain View, California. The structure was completed in 1931, the US Navy established more airship operations during WWII. As part of this ten lighter-than-air bases across the United States were built as part of the defense plan. Hangars at these bases are some of the worlds largest freestanding timber structures, an alternative to the fixed hangar is a portable shelter that can be used for aircraft storage and maintenance
19.
OK-GLI
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OK-GLI was a test vehicle in the Buran programme. It was constructed in 1984, and was used for 25 test flights between 1985 and 1988 before being retired and it is now an exhibition at the Technik Museum Speyer in Germany. The development of the Buran began in the late 1970s as a response to the U. S, the construction of the orbiters began in 1980, and by 1984 the first full-scale Buran was rolled out. The first suborbital test flight of a scale-model took place as early as July 1983, as the project progressed, five additional scale-model flights were performed. The OK-GLI test vehicle was constructed in 1984 and it was fitted with four AL-31 jet engines mounted at the rear. This Buran could take off under its own power for flight tests, in contrast to the American Enterprise test vehicle, which was entirely unpowered and relied on an air launch. The jets were used to take off from a landing strip, and once it reached a designated point. Nine taxi tests and twenty-five test flights of OK-GLI were performed, all tests and flights were carried out at Baikonur. After the program was cancelled, OK-GLI was stored at Gromov Flight Research Institute, near Moscow, in 2000, Analog Buran was sold to an Australian company called the Buran Space Corporation, owned by Australian astronaut Paul Scully-Power. Upon reassembly, OK-GLI was put on display in an enclosure for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. Visitors could walk around and inside the vehicle, and plans were in place for a tour of cities in Australia and Asia. The OK-GLI test vehicle was offered for sale, including by a radio auction on Los Angeles News 980 KFWB-AM with a starting price of US$6 million. In September 2004 a team of German journalists found the OK-GLI test vehicle in Bahrain and it was then bought by the Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum, to be transported to Germany in 2005. Due to legal issues, it remained in Bahrain for several years, on 4 March 2008 OK-GLI began its journey by sea to the Technik Museum Speyer where it was refurbished and serves as walk-in exhibit. No one was hurt and both the ship and vehicle seemed to only minor damage. Space Shuttle program Space Shuttle Enterprise Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105 — Soviet orbital spaceplane Elser, Heinz, Elser-Haft, Margrit, Lukashevich, history and Transportation of the Russian Space Shuttle OK-GLI to the Technik Museum Speyer. OK-GLI at Buran-Energia. com Buran Analogue entry at Encyclopedia Astronautica OK-GLI at K26. com OK-GLI at Technik Museum Speyer
20.
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105
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The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105 part of a programme known as the Spiral was a manned test vehicle to explore low-speed handling and landing. It was a result of a Soviet project to create an orbital spaceplane. The MiG105 was nicknamed Lapot Russian, лапоть, or bast shoe for the shape of its nose, the program was also known as EPOS. Work on this project began in 1965, two years after Dyna-Soars cancellation. The project was halted in 1969, to be resurrected in 1974 in response to the U. S. The test vehicle made its first subsonic free-flight test in 1976 and it was flown by pilot Aviard G. Fastovets to the Zhukovskii flight test center, a distance of 30.5 kilometres. Flight tests, totaling eight in all, continued sporadically until 1978, the actual space plane project was cancelled when the decision was made to instead proceed with the Buran project. The MiG test vehicle itself still exists and is currently on display at the Monino Air Force Museum in Russia, gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy was the leader of the Spiral development programme. Although having basically the same mission, Dyna-Soar and Spiral were radically different vehicles, for example, While the X-20 Dyna-Soar was designed for launch atop a conventional expendable rocket such as the Titan III-C or Saturn I, Soviet engineers opted for a midair launch scheme for Spiral. The mothership was to have built by the Tupolev Design Bureau and utilize many of the same technologies developed for the Tu-144 supersonic transport. Dyna-Soar was designed as a body, while Spiral was a conventional delta that featured an innovative variable-dihedral wing. During launch and reentry, these were folded upward at 60 degrees, after dropping to subsonic speeds post-reentry, the pilot lowered the wings into the horizontal position, giving the spaceplane better re-entry and flight characteristics. Spiral was built to allow for a landing and go-around maneuver in case of a missed landing approach. An air intake for a single Kolesov turbojet was mounted beneath the central vertical stabilizer and this was protected during launch and re-entry by a clamshell door which opened at subsonic speeds. By comparison, Dyna-Soar was designed primarily for a once-off, unpowered deadstick landing, high temperature superalloy metals such as niobium, molybdenum, tungsten and rene 41 were to have been used in the heatshield structure of the X-20. Several BOR craft were flown to test this concept, much like the Space Shuttle, Dyna-Soar was designed with a small payload bay behind the pressurized crew module. This could be used for lofting small satellites, carrying surveillance equipment, Spiral, on the other hand, was intended to carry only its pilot. Both Dyna-Soar and Spiral were designed to land on skids, the landing skids on Dyna-Soar were designed to deploy from insulated doors on the underside of the vehicle, like a conventional aircraft
21.
Space Shuttle program
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When its mission was complete, the orbiter would re-enter the Earths atmosphere and land like a glider at either the Kennedy Space Center or Edwards Air Force Base. The Shuttle is the only winged manned spacecraft to have achieved orbit and landing, and its missions involved carrying large payloads to various orbits, providing crew rotation for the space station, and performing service missions. The orbiter also recovered satellites and other payloads from orbit and returned them to Earth, the stalled plans for a U. S. space station evolved into the International Space Station and were formally initiated in 1983 by U. S. The first experimental orbiter Enterprise was a glider, launched from the back of a specially modified Boeing 747. The Space Shuttle program finished with its last mission, STS-135 flown by Atlantis, in July 2011, the Space Shuttle program formally ended on August 31,2011. Since the Shuttles retirement, many of its duties are performed by an assortment of government. The European ATV Automated Transfer Vehicle supplied the ISS between 2008 and 2015, classified military missions are being flown by the US Air Forces unmanned space plane, the X-37B. Crew service to the ISS is currently provided by the Russian Soyuz while work on the Commercial Crew Development program proceeds, for missions beyond low Earth orbit, NASA is building the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft. Before the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, NASA began early studies of space shuttle designs, in 1969, President Richard Nixon formed the Space Task Group, chaired by Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. Smaller goals included a variety of vehicles for moving spacecraft around in orbit. Presenting the plans to Nixon, Agnew was told that the administration would not commit to a Mars mission and he was then told to select one of the two remaining proposals. During early shuttle development there was debate about the optimal shuttle design that best balanced capability, development cost. Ultimately the current design was chosen, using a reusable winged orbiter, reusable solid rocket boosters, the shuttle program was formally launched on January 5,1972, when President Nixon announced that NASA would proceed with the development of a reusable space shuttle system. The prime contractor for the program was North American Rockwell, the company responsible for building the Apollo Command/Service Module. The contractor for the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters was Morton Thiokol, for the tank, Martin Marietta. All Space Shuttle missions were launched from the Kennedy Space Center, the weather criteria used for launch included, but were not limited to, precipitation, temperatures, cloud cover, lightning forecast, wind, and humidity. The Shuttle was not launched under conditions where it could have been struck by lightning, the first fully functional orbiter was Columbia, built in Palmdale, California. It was delivered to Kennedy Space Center on March 25,1979, Challenger was delivered to KSC in July 1982, Discovery in November 1983, Atlantis in April 1985 and Endeavour in May 1991
22.
National Geographic Society
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The National Geographic Society, headquartered in Washington, D. C. United States, is one of the largest nonprofit scientific and educational institutions in the world and its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical conservation, and the study of world culture and history. In partnership with 21st Century Fox, the Society operates the magazine, TV channels, a website that features extra content and worldwide events, the National Geographic Society was founded in 1888 to increase and diffuse geographic knowledge. The Society believes in the power of science, exploration and storytelling to change the world, National Geographic is governed by a board of trustees, whose 21 members include distinguished educators, business executives, former government officials and conservationists. The organization sponsors and funds research and exploration. National Geographic maintains a museum for the public in its Washington and its Education Foundation gives grants to education organizations and individuals to improve geography education. Its Committee for Research and Exploration has awarded more than 11,000 grants for scientific research, National Geographic has retail stores in Washington, D. C. The locations outside of the United States are operated by Worldwide Retail Store S. L and it also publishes other magazines, books, school products, maps, and Web and film products in numerous languages and countries. National Geographics various media properties reach more than 280 million people monthly, the National Geographic Society began as a club for an elite group of academics and wealthy patrons interested in travel. After preparing a constitution and a plan of organization, the National Geographic Society was incorporated two weeks later on January 27, Gardiner Greene Hubbard became its first president and his son-in-law, Alexander Graham Bell, succeeded him in 1897. Bell and Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor devised the successful marketing notion of Society membership, the current National Geographic Society president and CEO is Gary E. Knell. The chairman of the board of trustees is John Fahey, the editor-in-chief of National Geographic magazine is Susan Goldberg. Gilbert Melville Grosvenor, a chairman of the Society board of trustees received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005 for his leadership in geography education. In 2004, the National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, D. C. was one of the first buildings to receive a Green certification from Global Green USA. The National Geographic received the prestigious Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities in October 2006 in Oviedo, in 2013 the society was investigated for possible violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act relating to their close association with an Egyptian government official responsible for antiquities. This new, for-profit corporation, will own National Geographic and other magazines, as reported by The Guardian, a spokesman for National Geographic in a November 2,2015 e-mail statement, briefly discussed the rationale for the staff reductions as part of the. Process of reorganizing in order to move forward following the closing the National Geographic Partners deal. Additional specifics were provided to Photo District News by M. J. Jacobsen, National Geographic’s SVP of communications, similar to the contents of a formal announcement by the two companies
23.
Guinness World Records
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The book itself holds a world record, as the best-selling copyrighted book of all time. As of the 2017 edition, it is now in its 63rd year of publication, the international franchise has extended beyond print to include television series and museums. On 10 November 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, then the director of the Guinness Breweries, went on a shooting party in the North Slob, by the River Slaney in County Wexford. After missing a shot at a golden plover, he involved in an argument over which was the fastest game bird in Europe. That evening at Castlebridge House, he realised that it was impossible to confirm in reference books whether or not the golden plover was Europes fastest game bird. Beaver knew that there must be numerous other questions debated nightly in pubs throughout Ireland and abroad and he realised then that a book supplying the answers to this sort of question might prove successful. Beavers idea became reality when Guinness employee Christopher Chataway recommended University friends Norris and Ross McWhirter, the twin brothers were commissioned to compile what became The Guinness Book of Records in August 1954. A thousand copies were printed and given away, after the founding of The Guinness Book of Records at 107 Fleet Street, the first 198-page edition was bound on 27 August 1955 and went to the top of the British best seller lists by Christmas. The following year, it launched in the US, and sold 70,000 copies, since then, Guinness World Records has become a household name and the global leader in world records. Because the book became a hit, many further editions were printed, eventually settling into a pattern of one revision a year, published in September/October. The McWhirters continued to compile it for many years, Ross McWhirter was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1975. Following Ross assassination, the feature in the show where questions about records posed by children were answered was called Norris on the Spot, Guinness Superlatives Limited was formed in 1954 to publish the first book. Sterling Publishing owned the rights to the Guinness book in the US for decades, and, under their management, the group was owned by Guinness PLC and subsequently Diageo until 2001, when it was purchased by Gullane Entertainment. Gullane was itself purchased by HIT Entertainment in 2002, with offices in New York City and Tokyo, Guinness World Records global headquarters remain in London, while its museum attractions are based at Ripley headquarters in Orlando, Florida, US. Recent editions have focused on record feats by person competitors, many records also relate to the youngest person who achieved something, such as the youngest person to visit all nations of the world, being Maurizio Giuliano. Each edition contains a selection of the records from the Guinness database, as well as new records. The majority of records are no longer listed in the book or on the website. For those unable to wait the 4–6 weeks for a reply, the Guinness Book of Records is the worlds most sold copyrighted book, earning it an entry within its own pages
24.
BBC News
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BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the worlds largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, the service maintains 50 foreign news bureaux with more than 250 correspondents around the world. James Harding has been Director of News and Current Affairs since April 2013, the departments annual budget is in excess of £350 million, it has 3,500 staff,2,000 of whom are journalists. BBC News domestic, global and online news divisions are housed within the largest live newsroom in Europe, parliamentary coverage is produced and broadcast from studios in Millbank in London. Through the BBC English Regions, the BBC also has regional centres across England, as well as national news centres in Northern Ireland, Scotland, all nations and English regions produce their own local news programmes and other current affairs and sport programmes. As with all media outlets, though, it has been accused of political bias from across the political spectrum. The British Broadcasting Company broadcast its first radio bulletin from radio station 2LO on 14 November 1922, on Easter weekend in 1930, this reliance on newspaper wire services left the radio news service with no information to report. The BBC gradually gained the right to edit the copy and, in 1934, however, it could not broadcast news before 6 PM until World War II. Gaumont British and Movietone cinema newsreels had been broadcast on the TV service since 1936, a weekly Childrens Newsreel was inaugurated on 23 April 1950, to around 350,000 receivers. The network began simulcasting its radio news on television in 1946, televised bulletins began on 5 July 1954, broadcast from leased studios within Alexandra Palace in London. The publics interest in television and live events was stimulated by Elizabeth IIs coronation in 1953 and it is estimated that up to 27 million people viewed the programme in the UK, overtaking radios audience of 12 million for the first time. Those live pictures were fed from 21 cameras in central London to Alexandra Palace for transmission and that year, there were around two million TV Licences held in the UK, rising to over three million the following year, and four and a half million by 1955. This was then followed by the customary Television Newsreel with a commentary by John Snagge. It was revealed that this had been due to producers fearing a newsreader with visible facial movements would distract the viewer from the story. On-screen newsreaders were finally introduced a year later in 1955 – Kenneth Kendall, Robert Dougall, mainstream television production had started to move out of Alexandra Palace in 1950 to larger premises – mainly at Lime Grove Studios in Shepherds Bush, west London – taking Current Affairs with it. It was from here that the first Panorama, a new programme, was transmitted on 11 November 1953. On 28 October 1957, the Today programme, a radio programme, was launched in central London on the Home Service. In 1958, Hugh Carleton Greene became head of News and Current Affairs and he set up a BBC study group whose findings, published in 1959, were critical of what the television news operation had become under his predecessor, Tahu Hole
25.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
26.
Mir
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Mir was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, run by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. Mir was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996 and it had a greater mass than any previous spacecraft. At the time it was the largest artificial satellite in orbit and it holds the record for the longest single human spaceflight, with Valeri Polyakov spending 437 days and 18 hours on the station between 1994 and 1995. Mir was occupied for a total of twelve and a half out of its fifteen-year lifespan. Following the success of the Salyut programme, Mir represented the stage in the Soviet Unions space station programme. The first module of the station, known as the module or base block, was launched in 1986. Proton rockets were used to all of its components except for the docking module. When complete, the station consisted of seven pressurised modules and several unpressurised components, power was provided by several photovoltaic arrays attached directly to the modules. The station was maintained at an orbit between 296 km and 421 km altitude and traveled at an speed of 27,700 km/h. Mir was deorbited in March 2001 after funding was cut off, the cost of the Mir programme was estimated by former RKA General Director Yuri Koptev in 2001 as $4.2 billion over its lifetime. Mir was authorized on a 17 February 1976 decree, to design a model of the Salyut DOS-17K space stations. Four Salyut space stations had been launched since 1971, with three more being launched during Mirs development, by August 1978, this had evolved to the final configuration of one aft port and five ports in a spherical compartment at the forward end of the station. It was originally planned that the ports would connect to 7. 5-tonne modules derived from the Soyuz spacecraft and these modules would have used a Soyuz propulsion module, as in Soyuz and Progress, and the descent and orbital modules would have been replaced with a long laboratory module. However, following a February 1979 governmental resolution, the programme was consolidated with Vladimir Chelomeis manned Almaz military space station programme, the docking ports were reinforced to accommodate 20-tonne space station modules based on the TKS spacecraft. NPO Energia was responsible for the space station, with work subcontracted to KB Salyut, due to ongoing work on the Energia rocket and Salyut 7, Soyuz-T. KB Salyut began work in 1979, and drawings were released in 1982 and 1983, by early 1984, work on Mir had halted while all resources were being put into the Buran programme in order to prepare the Buran spacecraft for flight testing. Funding resumed in early 1984 when Valentin Glushko was ordered by the Central Committees Secretary for Space and Defence to orbit Mir by early 1986 and it was clear that the planned processing flow could not be followed and still meet the 1986 launch date. It was decided on Cosmonauts Day 1985 to ship the flight model of the block to the Baikonur cosmodrome and conduct the systems testing
27.
Kvant-1
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Kvant-1 was the first module to be attached in 1987 to the Mir Core Module, which formed the core of the Soviet space station Mir. It remained attached to Mir until the space station was deorbited in 2001. The Kvant-1 module contained scientific instruments for observations and materials science experiments. It was used to research into the physics of active galaxies, quasars and neutron stars. Furthermore, it supported biotechnology experiments in anti-viral preparations and fractions, some additions to Kvant-1 during its lifetime were solar arrays and the Sofora and Rapana girders. The Kvant-1 module was based on the TKS spacecraft and was the first, the 37K modules featured a jettisonable TKS-E type propulsion module, also called the Functional Service Module. The control system of Kvant-1 had been developed by NPO Electropribor, the Kvant spacecraft represented the first use of a new kind of Soviet space station module, designated 37K. An order authorising the beginning of development was issued on 17 September 1979, the basic 37K design consisted of a 4.2 m diameter pressurised cylinder with a docking port at the forward end. It was not equipped with its own propulsion system, the original authorisation was for a total of eight 37Ks of various configurations, One experimental 37KE which would be docked to the front port of the Salyut 7 space station. These would be delivered and docked to the station by a new lighter weight FGO tug and these would be carried in the payload bay of the Buran space shuttle. They could remain attached to the bay or be docked to the Mir or Mir-2 space stations using the Buran manipulator arm, the 37KE was designated Kvant and was equipped with an astrophysics payload. It also used the Salyut-5B digital flight computer and Gyrodyne flywheel orientation system developed for Almaz. As the module neared completion Salyut 7 experienced numerous technical problems, but at that time Mir was planned to be in a 65 degree orbit, and Kvant was 800 kg too heavy for the Proton launch vehicle to place in such an orbit. In January 1985 Mir was changed to a 51.6 degree orbit, but now it was planned that Kvant would dock with the rear port of Mir, requiring the addition of lines to conduct rocket propellant from Progress tanker spacecraft to Mirs storage tanks. This increased weight again, forcing the FGB to have its propellant load reduced to 60% in the pressure tanks. Kvant-1 consisted of two pressurized working compartments, one unpressurized experiment compartment and one small airlock for access to the telescopes and film change and it also carried additional life support systems including an Elektron oxygen generator and equipment for removing carbon dioxide from the air. They did, however, use a great deal of electricity – the average consumption of the Kvant-1 module was estimated to have been 6.90 kW. Kvant-1 was originally intended to be launched and docked to Salyut 7, Kvant-1 did not have any propulsion systems of its own and to reach Mir, Kvant-1 was mated with a Functional Service Module – carrying propulsion and electrical systems – to act as a space tug
28.
Kvant-2
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Kvant-2 was the third module and second major addition to the Mir space station. Its primary purpose was to new science experiments, better life support systems. It was launched on November 26,1989 on a Proton rocket and it docked to Mir on December 6. Its control system has been designed by the NPO Electropribor. Length,12.2 m Diameter,4.35 m Mass,19,640 kg Habitable volume,61.9 m3 Wingspan,24 m Configuration, Kvant-2 was divided into three compartments. They were the EVA airlock, the compartment, and the instrument/experiment compartment. The instrument/cargo compartment could be sealed off and act as an extension or a back-up to the airlock, before Kvant-2 docked to the station, EVAs had to be carried by depressurizing the docking node on the Core Module. Kvant-2 also carried the Soviet version of the Manned Maneuvering Unit for the Orlan space suit and it delivered the Salyut 5B computer which was an improvement over the Argon 16B computer already on the station. Kvant-2 had a system for regenerating water from urine and a shower for personal hygiene and it carried six gyrodynes to augment those already located in Kvant-1. Unlike Kvant-1, Kvant-2s gyrodynes were only accessible from the exterior which turned out to make replacement of failed ones more difficult, a list of experiments and equipment follows, ARIZ X-ray spectrometer ASPG-M scan platform carrying ITS-7D IR spectrometer. Cosmic dust detectors Gamma 2 spectrometer package Ikar EVA unit Inkubator 2 - bird egg incubator KAP-350 topographic camera MKF-6MA Earth resources film camera -6 spectral bands, mKS-M2 optical spectrometer Phaza AFM-2 spectrometer Spektr-256 spectrometer Sprut 5 charged particle spectrometer. TV cameras Volna 2 propellant tank demonstration Russian Space Web Encyclopedia Astronautica Gunters Space Page - information on Kvant-2
29.
Kristall
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The Kristall module was the fourth module and the third major addition to the Mir space station. As with previous modules, its configuration was based on the 77K module and it was launched on May 31,1990 on a Proton rocket. It docked to Mir autonomously on June 10,1990, Kristall had several materials processing furnaces. They were called Krater 5, Optizon 1, Zona 2 and it also had a biotechnology experiment called the Aniur electrophoresis unit. These experiments were capable of generating 100 kg of raw materials for use on Earth, located in the docking node was the Priroda 5 camera which was used for Earth resources experiments. Kristall also had several astronomy and astrophysics experiments which were designed to augment experiments that were located in Kvant-1. Kristalls solar panels were different from others on Mir. They were designed to be collapsible which means that they could be deployed and retracted several times, one of Kristalls solar panels was removed and re-deployed on Kvant-1 in 1995. That solar panel was later disposed of in November,1997, Kristall also carried six gyrodines for attitude control and to augment those already on the station. The control system of Kristall was developed by the JSC Khartron, Kristall carried two APAS-89 Androgynous Peripheral Attach System designed to be compatible with the Buran shuttle. One unit was located axially and the other was located radially, after the cancellation of the Buran program in 1993, the lateral docking port found use for the Shuttle-Mir Program. The radial port was never used, the axial port was tested by the modified Soyuz TM-16 spacecraft in 1993 in preparation for Shuttle dockings. On May 26,1995, Kristall was moved from the -Y port on the Mir base block to the -X port and it was then moved on May 30 to -Z port in preparation for the arrival of the Spektr module. On June 10, Kristall was moved back to -X port to prepare for the upcoming Shuttle docking, the first Space Shuttle docking occurred in 1995 during STS-71 by the Space Shuttle Atlantis. On July 17,1995, Kristall was moved one last time to its permanent position at the -Z port, for Buran dockings, the entire procedure of moving Kristall would have to be used. On STS-74, the next Shuttle docking, Atlantis carried a docking module that was attached to Kristall and this allowed future shuttle dockings to be carried out without the need to move Kristall. Russian Space Web Encyclopedia Astronautica Gunters Space Page - information on Kristall
30.
Androgynous Peripheral Attach System
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A system similar to APAS-89/95 is used by the Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft. The name of the system is Russian in origin, and is an acronym, АПАС, in the Cyrillic alphabet, from the Russian, Андрогинно-периферийный агрегат стыковки. The English acronym was designed to be just the letters but in the Latin alphabet. The third word in Russian comes from the German aggregat, meaning complicated mechanism, the last two words in the English name were picked to begin with the same equivalent letters as in the Russian name. The idea behind the design is that unlike with the docking system, any APAS docking ring can mate with any other APAS docking ring. In each docking there is an active and a passive side, there are three basic variations of the APAS system. There were differences between the American and Soviet version of the mechanism, but they were still mechanically compatible. Early on, the Americans called the device both the International Rendezvous and Docking Mission Docking Mechanism and the International Docking System, the device is called the Androgynous Peripheral Docking System in the NASA press packet for ASTP. Unlike previous docking systems, either APAS-75 unit could assume the active or passive role as required, for docking, the spade-shaped guides of the extended active unit and the retracted passive unit interacted for gross alignment. The ring holding the guides shifted to align the active unit latches with the passive unit catches, after these caught, shock absorbers dissipated residual impact energy in the American unit, mechanical attenuators served the same function on the Soviet side. The active unit then retracted to bring the docking collars together, guides and sockets in the docking collars completed alignment. Four spring push rods drove the spacecraft apart at undocking, the Americans selected North American Rockwell to construct seven docking mechanisms. Russia built five Soyuz spacecraft that used APAS-75, the first three flew as test systems. One was used for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, Soyuz 19 the only Soyuz to actually use the system. On the American side the ASTP Docking Module carried one APAS-75 docking collar, in April 1970 NASA Administrator Thomas O. Engineer Caldwell Johnson proposed a ring and cone system during a meeting in Moscow during October 1970. During a meeting in Houston during June 1971, Soviet docking specialist Valentin N. Bobkov indicated that the Soviets also favored some version of the double ring and cone. Bobkov illustrated through sketches that the diameter of the docking system could not exceed 1.3 meters. When Johnson raised the question of altering the shroud, the Soviets stressed the impact that such a modification would have
31.
2.01 (Buran-class spacecraft)
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2.01 is the designation of the third space shuttle to be produced as part of the Soviet/Russian Buran program. It carried the GRAU index serial number 11F35 K3 and is - depending on the source - also known as OK-2K1, Orbiter K3 and this Buran-class shuttle orbiter was never officially named, but known by its nickname Baikal. Its construction was not complete when the Buran program was ended, the 2.01 is the first of a second series of Buran-class shuttle orbiters. It was projected in 1989 that orbiter 2.01 would have its first manned space test flight in 1994, the craft would have been equipped with a life support system and two ejection seats. Crew would have consisted of two cosmonauts — Igor Volk and Aleksandr Ivanchenko, after residing at the Tushino factory where it was constructed, it was incorrectly announced in 2006 that orbiter 2.01 would be put on display in the Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum, Germany. However, the German Museum had actually bought OK-GLI, the jet-powered Buran atmospheric test vehicle, since 2004 the orbiter 2.01 had been left under open sky on a car park in Moscow, near Khimki Reservoir. On 22 June 2011 during the day the orbiter was put on a barge to be moved to the MAKS2011 international air show, in the night of 22–23 June it was seen on the Moskva River. As of November 2013, it remained at the Ramenskoye–Zhukovsky Airport
32.
Reusable launch system
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A reusable launch system is a launch system which is capable of launching a payload into space more than once. This contrasts with expendable launch systems, where each vehicle is launched once. No completely reusable orbital launch system has ever created, however. The Space Shuttle was partially reusable, the orbiter, and the two rocket boosters were reused after several months of refitting work for each launch. However the external tank was discarded after each flight, the Falcon 9 rocket is designed to have a reusable first stage, several of these stages have been safely returned to land after launch. Several partially reusable systems, such as Adeline and Vulcan, are currently under development, one fully reusable system, Orbital RLVs are thought to provide the possibility of low cost and highly reliable access to space. However, advances in materials and engine technology have rendered this concept potentially feasible, before VTVL SSTO designs came the partially reusable multi-stage NEXUS launcher by Krafft Arnold Ehricke. The pioneer in the field of VTVL SSTO, Philip Bono, Bono proposed several launch vehicles including, ROOST, ROMBUS, Ithacus, Pegasus and SASSTO. Most of his vehicles combined similar innovations to achieve SSTO capability, Bono proposed, Plug nozzle engines to retain high specific impulse at all altitudes. Base first reentry which allowed the reuse of the engine as a heat shield, Use of spherical tanks and stubby shape to reduce vehicle structural mass further. Use of drop tanks to increase range, Use of in-orbit refueling to increase range. Bono also proposed the use of his vehicles for space launch, rapid intercontinental military transport, rapid intercontinental civilian transport, even Moon, in Europe, Dietrich Koelle, inspired by Bonos SASSTO design, proposed his own VTVL vehicle named BETA. Before HTHL SSTO designs came Eugen Sänger and his Silbervogel suborbital skip bomber, HTHL vehicles which can reach orbital velocity are harder to design than VTVL due to their higher vehicle structural weight. This led to several multi-stage prototypes such as a suborbital X-15, aerospaceplane being one of the first HTHL SSTO concepts. Proposals have been made to such a vehicle more viable including. Other launch system configuration designs are such as horizontal launch with vertical landing. One of the few HTVL vehicles is the 1960s concept spacecraft Hyperion SSTO, x-20 Dyna-Soar is an early example of a VTHL design, while the HL-20 and X-34 are examples from the 1990s. As of February 2010, the VTHL X-37 has completed initial development, currently proposed VTHL manned spaceplanes include the Dream Chaser and Prometheus, both circa 2010 concept spaceplanes proposed to NASA under the CCDev program
33.
Falcon 9 Full Thrust
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Falcon 9 Full Thrust—also known as Falcon 9 v1.2 —is a partially reusable low earth orbit launch vehicle and the first to use propulsive vertical landing of its first stage. The same first stage has been used twice to successfully launch payloads into orbit and it is the third version of the SpaceX Falcon 9 orbital launch vehicle. Designed in 2014–2015, it began operations in December 2015. Over 50 launches are planned for it over the years 2017–2019.0, Falcon 9 Full Thrust is a substantial upgrade over the older Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket, which flew its last mission in January 2016. At that time, the performance was reserved for SpaceX to conduct reusability testing with the Falcon 9 v1.1 while still achieving the specified payloads for customers. Many engineering changes to support reusability and recovery of the first stage had been made on this earlier v1.1 version, SpaceX indicated they had room to increase the payload performance for the Falcon 9 Full Thrust, or decrease launch price, or both. In 2015, SpaceX announced a number of modifications to the previous version Falcon 9 v1.1 launch vehicle, since the first flight in late 2015, SpaceX has been referring to the full thrust upgrade Falcon 9 merely as Falcon 9. However, it is the major version of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle following the Falcon 9 v1.0. The Falcon 9 Full Thrust was first launched on 22 December 2015, what were also doing is modifying the structure a little bit. I want to be building only two versions, or two cores in my factory, any more than that would not be great from a customer perspective and its about a 30% increase in performance, maybe a little more. What it does is it allows us to land the first stage for GTO missions on the drone ship, according to a SpaceX statement in May 2015, Falcon 9 Full Thrust would likely not require a recertification to launch for United States government contracts. Shotwell stated that It is a process and that It will become quicker and quicker to certify new versions of the vehicle. SES S. A. a satellite owner and operator, announced plans in February 2015 to launch its SES-9 satellite on the first flight of the Falcon 9 Full Thrust. In the event, SpaceX elected to launch SES-9 on the flight of the Falcon 9 Full Thrust. The upgraded first stage began acceptance testing at SpaceXs McGregor facility in September 2015, the first of two static fire tests was completed on 21 September 2015 and included the subcooled propellant and the improved Merlin 1D engines. The rocket reached full throttle during the fire and was scheduled for launch no earlier than 17 November 2015. The second mission, SES-9, occurred on 4 March 2016, SpaceX maintains that it has designed its engines so that they can withstand cracking in the turbines, but it’s also working on ways to get rid of the problem. A principal objective of the new design was to facilitate booster reusability for a range of missions
34.
Falcon Heavy
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Falcon Heavy, previously known as the Falcon 9 Heavy, is a super heavy lift space launch vehicle being designed and manufactured by SpaceX. The Falcon Heavy is a variant of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and will consist of a strengthened Falcon 9 rocket core and this will increase the low Earth orbit payload to 64 tonnes, compared to 22.8 tonnes for a Falcon 9 full thrust. Falcon Heavy was designed from the outset to carry humans into space, Elon Musk first mentioned Falcon Heavy in a September 2005 news update, referring to a customer request from 18 months prior. Various solutions using the planned Falcon 5 had been explored, but the only cost effective, I want to emphasize that although SpaceX development is now primarily on the Falcon 5/9, Falcon 1 is and will always remain a very important part of our business. I think that once the market has time to adapt to its existence. As the Falcon Heavy was based on common cores and engines, by August 2008, SpaceX were aiming for the first launch of Falcon 9 in Q22009, and Falcon 9 Heavy would be in a couple of years. Speaking at the 2008 Mars Society Conference, Elon Musk also said that an upper stage would follow 2–3 years later. At a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington and this opens a new world of capability for both government and commercial space missions. In order to accommodate Falcon 9 and Heavy, Launch Complex 4 at Vandenberg was being demolished as part of a pad upgrade, the first launch from the Cape Canaveral east-coast launch complex was planned for late 2013 or 2014. In 2015, SpaceX announced a number of changes to the Falcon Heavy rocket, in April 2015, SpaceX sent the U. S. Air Force an updated letter of intent April 14 outlining a certification process for its Falcon Heavy rocket to launch national security satellites. The process includes three successful flights of the Falcon Heavy including two successful flights, and states that Falcon Heavy can be ready to fly national security payloads by 2017. The flight was now to be launched from the refurbished Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A, in August 2016, the demonstration flight was moved to early 2017, then to Summer 2017. A second demonstration flight is scheduled for September 30,2017 with the STP-2 US Air Force payload. The first commercial GTO mission is scheduled in 2018 for Arabsat, on 29 December 2016, SpaceX released a photo showing the Falcon Heavy interstage at the company headquarter in Hawthorne, California. The Falcon Heavy falls into the super heavy-lift range of systems under the classification system used by a NASA human spaceflight review panel. The initial concept envisioned payloads of 25 tons to LEO, by late 2013, SpaceX raised the projected GTO payload for Falcon Heavy to up to 21,200 kilograms. In April 2017, the projected LEO payload for Falcon Heavy was raised from up to 54,400 kilograms to up to 64,000 kilograms. Falcon Heavy will be more capable than any other operational rocket, the rocket was designed to meet or exceed all current requirements of human rating
35.
Adeline (rocket stage)
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They would then be refurbished and be reused on another flight. The design may be used in evolution of Ariane 6. The project engineers believe it could recover 20-30% of the cost of a flight at a weight penalty cost of perhaps 10%. After the stage is exhausted, the module is jettisoned for reentry. At a certain point in the descent, Adeline would pull up using its small winglets, as it approaches the runway, landing gear and two small pusher configuration propellers would be deployed to perform a powered horizontal landing. The concept would allow for reusing 80% of the economic value. The engines could be re-flown about 10 to 20 times, Airbus started this program in 2010 and has invested about 15 million € by May 2015 on the reusable technology programme, scale models have been flown. Ariane 6 is currently a development priority for Airbus Defence and Space, Adeline comes afterwards
36.
Ariane 6
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The Ariane 6 is a launch vehicle under development by the European Space Agency, with a first test flight scheduled for 2020. If development is completed, it become the newest member in the Ariane launch vehicle family. The final design was selected by the ESA ministerial-level meeting in December 2014, Ariane 6 will come in two variants. Ariane 62, with two P120 solid boosters, will weigh around 500 tonnes at liftoff and is intended mainly for government and it will be capable of launching up to 5,000 kg into GTO. Ariane 64, with four P120 boosters, will have a weight of around 800 tonnes and is intended for commercial dual-satellite launches of up to 10,500 kg to GTO. Ariane 6 will be made up of three major structural and propellant-carrying components, the Lower Liquid Propulsion Module, is Ariane 6s first stage and will burn liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellant. It will be powered by an updated version of Ariane 5s Vulcain 2 engine. The LLPM will be 5.4 m in diameter and contain approximately 150 t of propellant, additional thrust for the first stage will be provided by either two or four P120 Solid rocket boosters, known within the Ariane 6s nomenclature as Equipped Solid Rocket. These boosters will each contain approximately 120 t propellant and will deliver up to 3,500 kN thrust, additionally, the P120 is intended to be used on an upgraded Vega launcher. The Upper Liquid Propulsion Module will be the Ariane 6s upper stage, as the LLPM, it will also be 5.4 m in diameter and burn hydrogen and oxygen as propellant. It will be powered by a Vinci engine providing 180 kN thrust and it will contain approximately 30 t of LH2 and LOX propellant. Following detailed definition studies in 2012, the ESA announced the selection of the PPH configuration for Ariane 6 in July 2013. This design would be composed of three P145 solid rocket motors as a first stage, a single P145 motor as a stage. It would be capable of launching up to 6,500 kg to GTO, development was projected to cost €4 billion as of May 2013. A2014 study concluded that development cost could be reduced to about 3 billion Euros by limiting contractors to five countries, in June 2014 Airbus and Safran surprised the ESA by announcing a counter proposal for the Ariane 6. They also announced a 50/50 joint venture to develop the rocket and this joint venture would also involve buying out the French governments interest in Arianespace. This proposed launch system would come in two variants, the Ariane 6.1 and the Ariane 6.2. The Ariane 6.1 would have the ability to launch two electrically powered satellites at once, while the Ariane 6.2 was intended mostly for government payloads, proposed launch prices of 85 million € for Ariane 6.1 and 69 million € for Ariane 6
37.
Baikal (rocket booster)
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The Baikal booster was a proposed reusable flyback booster for the Angara rocket family based on the Angara Universal Rocket Module in 2001. It was designed by the Molniya Research and Industrial Corporation for the Khrunichev Space centre, reusing the flyback, the booster would be equipped with an RD-191 rocket engine burning kerosene and liquid oxygen to provide approximately 200 tons of thrust. In addition, it would be equipped with a folding wing stored parallel to the fuselage of the vehicle during the stage of the flight. Apart from economic advantages, this greatly reduces the risk of falling space debris. Reducing this risk was important as the Angara rockets will be launched from the deep inland Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a full-size engineering mock-up of the Baikal was exhibited at the Paris Air Show in July 2001. Similar mockups were tested in wind tunnels of the Central Aero- and Hydrodynamics Institute TsAGI, liquid Fly-back Booster Reusable Booster System Reusable launch system Kirilov, Vladimir. Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, archived from the original on 2 October 2009
38.
Angara (rocket family)
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The Angara rocket family is a family of space-launch vehicles being developed by the Moscow-based Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center. The rockets are to put between 3,800 and 24,500 kg into low Earth orbit and are intended, along with Soyuz-2 variants, additionally, the Soviet Unions main spaceport, Baikonur Cosmodrome, was located in Kazakhstan, and Russia encountered difficulties negotiating for its use. Several companies submitted bids for the new rocket, and in 1994 Khrunichev, khrunichevs initial design called for the use of a modified RD-170 for first stage propulsion and a liquid hydrogen powered second stage. This new modular rocket would require construction of a new launch pad, by 2004, the design of Angara had taken shape and the project proceeded with development of the launchers. In 2014,22 years after Angaras original conception, the first launch took place on July 9, the Universal Rocket Module forms the core of every Angara vehicle. In the Angara A5, four additional URM-1s act as boosters, each URM-1 is powered by a single NPO Energomash RD-191 burning liquid oxygen and RP-1. The RD-191 is an engine derived from the four-chamber RD-170. The RD-191 is capable of throttling down to at least 30%, the URM-1 consists of a liquid oxygen tank at the top, followed by an intertank structure containing flight control and telemetry equipment, with the kerosene tank below that. At the base of the module is a bay containing engine gimballing equipment for vehicle pitch and yaw. The second stage of the Angara, designated URM-2, uses one KBKhA RD-0124A engine also burning liquid oxygen, the RD-0124A is nearly identical to the RD-0124 currently powering the second stage of Soyuz-2, designated Block I. The URM-2 has a diameter of 3.6 meters for the Angara A5 and other proposed variants. The Angara 1.2 will fly a smaller RD-0124A-powered second stage, Angara 1.2 will not use an upper stage, nor will Angara A5 when delivering payloads to low orbits. For higher energy orbits such as GTO, Angara A5 will use the Briz-M upper stage, powered by one S5. 98M burning N2O4 and UDMH, or eventually a new upper stage. This stage will use the LH2/LOX powered RD-0146D and allow Angara A5 to bring up to two more mass to GTO. The Blok D is being considered as a stage when launched from Vostochny since it will avoid the toxic propellant of the Briz-M. The smallest Angara under development is the Angara 1.2, which consists of one URM-1 core and it has a lift-off mass of 171 tonnes and can deliver 3.8 tonnes of payload to a 200 km x 60° orbit. A modified Angara 1.2, called Angara 1. 2pp and this flight lasted 22 minutes and carried a mass simulator weighing 1,430 kilograms. Weighing 773 tonnes at lift-off, Angara A5 has a capacity of 24.5 tonnes to a 200 km x 60° orbit
39.
New Glenn
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The New Glenn is a privately funded orbital launch vehicle in development by Blue Origin. It is expected to make its initial test launch prior to 2020, design work on the vehicle began in 2012. The high-level specifications for the vehicle were publicly announced in September 2016, New Glenn is described as a 7-meter-diameter, two- or three-stage rocket. Its first stage will be powered by seven BE-4 engines that are also being designed and manufactured by Blue Origin, like the New Shepard suborbital launch vehicle that preceded it, the New Glenns first stage is designed to be reusable. After initiating the development of a rocket system prior to 2012. In January 2016, Blue Origin indicated that the new rocket would be many times larger than New Shepard even though it would be the smallest of the family of Blue Origin orbital vehicles. Blue Origin publicly released the design of the vehicle—and announced the name New Glenn—in September 2016. Blue Origin began developing systems for orbital human spacecraft prior to 2012, a reusable first-stage booster was projected to fly a suborbital trajectory, taking off vertically like the booster stage of a conventional multistage rocket. The first-stage booster was to be refueled and launched again, allowing improved reliability, the booster rocket was projected to loft Blue Origins biconic Space Vehicle capsule to orbit, carrying astronauts and supplies. After completing its mission in orbit, the Space Vehicle was designed to reenter Earths atmosphere and land under parachutes on land, engine testing for the Reusable Booster System launch vehicle began in 2012. A full-power test of the thrust chamber for Blue Origin BE-3 liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen upper-stage rocket engine was conducted at a NASA test facility in October 2012, the chamber successfully achieved full thrust of 100,000 pounds-force. Further plans for a launch vehicle were made public in 2015. By March 2016, the rocket was referred to by the name of Very Big Brother. It was stated to be a two-stage-to-orbit liquid-propellant rocket, with the launcher intended to be reusable, Blue Origin indicated that the first orbital launch was expected in 2020 from the Florida launch facility. The number of engines powering each stage was not released, nor was the payload or gross launch weight specifications, Blue Origin intends to launch the rocket from the historic Launch Complex 36 and manufacture the rockets at a new facility on nearby land in Exploration Park. Acceptance testing of the BE-4 engines will also be done in Florida, the first stage is reusable and will land vertically, just like the New Shepard suborbital launch vehicle that preceded it. Three weeks of wind tunnel testing of a scale model New Glenn were completed in September 2016 in order to validate the CFD design models of transonic and supersonic flight, the New Glenn is a 7-meter-diameter two-stage orbital launch vehicle with an optional third stage and a reusable first stage. The first stage will be powered by seven BE-4 methane/oxygen engines—designed and manufactured by Blue Origin—producing 17,000 kN of liftoff thrust, the second stage will share the same diameter as the first and use a single BE-4, but optimized for vacuum with a longer nozzle
40.
Space Shuttle
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The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated by the U. S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program name was Space Transportation System, taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft of which it was the only item funded for development, the first of four orbital test flights occurred in 1981, leading to operational flights beginning in 1982. Five complete Shuttle systems were built and used on a total of 135 missions from 1981 to 2011, the Shuttle fleets total mission time was 1322 days,19 hours,21 minutes and 23 seconds. Shuttle components included the Orbiter Vehicle, a pair of solid rocket boosters. The Shuttle was launched vertically, like a rocket, with the two SRBs operating in parallel with the OVs three main engines, which were fueled from the ET. The SRBs were jettisoned before the vehicle reached orbit, and the ET was jettisoned just before orbit insertion, at the conclusion of the mission, the orbiter fired its OMS to de-orbit and re-enter the atmosphere. The orbiter then glided as a spaceplane to a landing, usually at the Shuttle Landing Facility of KSC or Rogers Dry Lake in Edwards Air Force Base. After landing at Edwards, the orbiter was back to the KSC on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. The first orbiter, Enterprise, was built in 1976 for use in Approach, four fully operational orbiters were initially built, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis. Of these, two were lost in accidents, Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003, with a total of fourteen astronauts killed. A fifth operational orbiter, Endeavour, was built in 1991 to replace Challenger, the Space Shuttle was retired from service upon the conclusion of Atlantiss final flight on July 21,2011. Nixons post-Apollo NASA budgeting withdrew support of all components except the Shuttle. The vehicle consisted of a spaceplane for orbit and re-entry, fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks. The first of four orbital test flights occurred in 1981, leading to operational flights beginning in 1982, all launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The system was retired from service in 2011 after 135 missions, the program ended after Atlantis landed at the Kennedy Space Center on July 21,2011. Major missions included launching numerous satellites and interplanetary probes, conducting space science experiments, the first orbiter vehicle, named Enterprise, was built for the initial Approach and Landing Tests phase and lacked engines, heat shielding, and other equipment necessary for orbital flight. A total of five operational orbiters were built, and of these and it was used for orbital space missions by NASA, the US Department of Defense, the European Space Agency, Japan, and Germany. The United States funded Shuttle development and operations except for the Spacelab modules used on D1, sL-J was partially funded by Japan
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Ares I
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Ares I was the crew launch vehicle that was being developed by NASA as part of the Constellation Program. The name Ares refers to the Greek deity Ares, who is identified with the Roman god Mars, Ares I was originally known as the Crew Launch Vehicle. NASA planned to use Ares I to launch Orion, the intended for NASA human spaceflight missions after the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011. Ares I was to complement the larger, unmanned Ares V, NASA selected the Ares designs for their anticipated overall safety, reliability and cost-effectiveness. However, the Constellation program, including Ares I was cancelled by Barack Obama in October 2010 with the passage of his 2010 NASA authorization bill, in September 2011, NASA detailed the Space Launch System as its new vehicle for human exploration beyond Earths orbit. In 1995 Lockheed Martin produced an Advanced Transportation System Studies report for the Marshall Space Flight Center, a section of the ATSS report describes several possible vehicles much like the Ares I design, with liquid rocket second stages stacked above segmented solid rocket booster first stages. The variants that were considered included both the J-2S engines and Space Shuttle Main Engines for the second stage, the variants also assumed use of the Advanced Solid Rocket Motor as a first stage, but the ASRM was cancelled in 1993 due to significant cost overruns. President George W. Originally, the vehicle would have used a four-segment solid rocket booster for the first stage, an unmanned version was to use the five-segment booster, but with the second stage using the single SSME. The Exploration Systems Architecture Study concluded that the cost and safety of the Ares was superior to that of either of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, the cost estimates in the study were based on the assumption that new launch pads would be needed for human-rated EELVs. The ESAS launch safety estimates for the Ares were based on the Space Shuttle, despite the differences, the estimate counted each Shuttle launch as two safe launches of the Ares booster. The safety of the Atlas V and Delta IV was estimated from the rates of all Delta II, Atlas-Centaur. Ares I was the crew launch component of the Constellation program, Originally named the Crew Launch Vehicle or CLV, the Ares name was chosen from the Greek deity Ares. Having two separate launch vehicles allows for more specialized designs for the crew and heavy cargo launch rockets, the Ares I rocket was specifically being designed to launch the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle. Orion was intended as a capsule, similar in design to the Apollo program capsule, to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, the Moon. Ares I might have delivered some resources to orbit, including supplies for the International Space Station or subsequent delivery to the planned lunar base. NASA selected Alliant Techsystems, the builder of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters, NASA announced that Rocketdyne would be the main subcontractor for the J-2X rocket engine on July 16,2007. NASA selected Boeing to provide and install the avionics for the Ares I rocket on December 12,2007, on August 28,2007 NASA awarded the Ares I Upper Stage manufacturing contract to Boeing. Boeing built the S-IC stage of the Saturn V rocket at Michoud Assembly Facility in the 1960s
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Ares V
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The Ares V was the planned cargo launch component of the NASA Constellation program, which was to have replaced the Space Shuttle after its retirement in 2011. Ares V was also planned to carry supplies for a presence on Mars. Ares V and the smaller Ares I were named after Ares, the Ares V was to launch the Earth Departure Stage and Altair lunar lander for NASAs return to the Moon, which was planned for 2019. It would also have served as the launcher for missions beyond the Earth-Moon system, including the programs ultimate goal. The unmanned Ares V would complement the smaller, and human-rated Ares I rocket for the launching of the 4–6 person Orion spacecraft. Both rockets, deemed safer than the then-current Space Shuttle, would have utilized technologies developed for the Apollo program, the Shuttle, however, the Constellation program, including Ares V and Ares I was canceled in October 2010 by the NASA Authorization Act of 2010. In September 2011, NASA detailed the Space Launch System as its new vehicle for exploration beyond Earths orbit. In the 1996 book The Case for Mars, author Robert Zubrin discussed a future heavy launch vehicle named Ares. In the book, the rocket would have consisted of the Space Shuttles External Tank powered by four Space Shuttle Main Engines, one notable difference in the Zubrin et al. design is that the SSMEs were on a small side-mounted flyback craft. This design was meant to allow the Ares to fly using existing Space Shuttle infrastructure, Ares V was to be the cargo launch component of the Constellation program. This configuration would have allowed the two vehicles to be optimized for their respective missions. Constellation therefore combined the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous used by Apollo with the Earth Orbit Rendezvous mode proposed by Dr. Wernher von Braun during the planning stage of Apollo. Development of the rocket and its Earth departure stage was led by Marshall Space Flight Center, ames Research Center was responsible for the Ares V integrated health management system supports in developing its payload shroud. Glenn Research Center led the development of the lunar lander ascent stage as well as Ares V power system, thrust vector control system, langley Research Center had a lead role on Ares V aerodynamics. In 2007 NASA announced that Alliant Techsystems will be the contractor for the SRBs of both Ares I and Ares V. Although the Ares V was a medium to long term project, NASA planned to deploy its lift capability in a range of projects, one proposal was to build an 8 to 16-meter Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope to be placed in the Sun/Earth L2 point. It would be a significant increase in dimension and performance over the Hubble Space Telescope, future Ares V missions could also have served as a cost-effective, mass transport of construction materials for future spacecraft and missions, delivering raw materials for example to a Moon dock. In May 2010 NASA planned flight demonstrations of Ares V hardware along with Ares I hardware after the scheduled upcoming Ares I-X Prime test of the Ares I 5-segment SRB first stage
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