Is it so easy to put a person in a jar or about the design of manned spacecraft. How the emergency rescue system for the crew of a spacecraft works How a spaceship works for children

World Space Week kicked off today. It is held annually from 4 to 10 October. Exactly 60 years ago, the first man-made object, the Soviet Sputnik-1, was launched into low Earth orbit. It orbited the Earth for 92 days until it burned up in the atmosphere. After that, the road to space and man was opened. It became clear that it cannot be sent with a one-way ticket. Vladimir Seroukhov, correspondent of the MIR 24 TV channel, learned how space technologies developed.

In 1961, Saratov anti-aircraft gunners spotted an unidentified flying object on the radar. They were warned in advance: if they see such a container falling from the sky, it is not worth interfering with its flight. After all, this is the first space descent vehicle in history with a man on board. But landing in this capsule was not safe, so at an altitude of 7 kilometers he ejected and descended to the surface already with a parachute.

The capsule of the ship "Vostok", in the slang of engineers - "Ball", also descended by parachute. So Gagarin, Tereshkova and other space pioneers returned to Earth. Due to the design features, passengers experienced incredible overloads of 8 g. The conditions in Soyuz capsules are much easier. They have been used for more than half a century, but they should soon be replaced by a new generation of ships -.

“This is the seat of the crew commander and co-pilot. Just those places from which the ship will be controlled, control of all systems. In addition to these chairs, there will be two more chairs on the sides. This is for researchers,” says Oleg Kukin, Deputy Head of the Flight Test Department of RSC Energia.

Compared to the Soyuz family of ships, which are still morally obsolete, and where only three astronauts could fit in close quarters, the Federation capsule is a real apartment, 4 meters in diameter. Now the main task- to understand how convenient and functional the device will be for the crew.

Management is now available to two crew members. The remote control keeps pace with the times - these are three touch displays where you can control information and be more autonomous in orbit.

“Here, in order to choose a landing site where we can sit down. We directly see the map, the flight route. They can also control the weather conditions if this information is transmitted from the Earth, - said Oleg Kukin, Deputy Head of the Flight Test Department of RSC Energia.

"Federation" is designed for flights to the moon, it's about four days of travel one way. All this time, the astronauts must be in the fetal position. In rescue chairs, or cradles, it is surprisingly comfortable. Each one is a piece of jewelry.

"The measurement of all anthropometric data begins with the measurement of mass," said Victor Sinigin, head of the medical department of NPP Zvezda.

Here it is - the space studio, the Zvezda enterprise. Here, individual spacesuits and lodgements are made for astronauts. For people lighter than 50 kilograms, the way on board is ordered, as well as for those who are heavier than 95. Height must also be average in order to fit in the cabin of the ship. Therefore, measurements are taken in the fetal position.

This is how the chair for the Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata was cast. Got an imprint of the pelvis, back and head. In conditions of weightlessness, the growth of any astronaut can increase by a couple of centimeters, so the lodgement is made with a margin. It should be not only comfortable, but also safe in case of a hard landing.

“The very idea of ​​modeling is to save internal organs. Kidneys, liver, they are encapsulated. If they are allowed to expand, they can break like plastic bag with water that fell to the floor, ”Sinigin explained.

In total, 700 lodgements were made in this way not only for the Russians, but also for the Japanese, Italians and even colleagues from the States who worked at the Mir and ISS stations.

“The Americans on their Shuttle carried our lodgements and spacesuits that we made for them, and other rescue equipment. We left it all at the station, in case of an emergency leaving the station, but already on our ship, ”said Vladimir Maslennikov, lead engineer of the testing department at NPP Zvezda.

It will sail into space when a suitable launch vehicle is selected for it. This should happen within four years. The test will give a countdown to the new era of the space age.

Introduction

From the course of physics, I learned that in order for a body to become an artificial satellite of the Earth, it needs to be told a speed equal to 8 km / s (I cosmic speed). If such a speed is imparted to a body in a horizontal direction near the surface of the Earth, then in the absence of an atmosphere it will become a satellite of the Earth, revolving around it in a circular orbit.

Such a speed can only be reported to satellites by sufficiently powerful space rockets. Currently, thousands of artificial satellites are orbiting the Earth!

And in order to reach other planets, the spacecraft needs to be informed of space velocity II, which is about 11.6 km/s! For example, to reach Mars, which the Americans are going to do soon, you need to fly at such a huge speed for more than eight and a half months! And that's not counting the way back to Earth.

What should be the structure of a spacecraft to achieve such huge, unimaginable speeds?! This topic interested me a lot, and I decided to learn all the subtleties of the design of spaceships. As it turned out, the tasks of practical design bring about new forms in life. aircraft and require the development of new materials, which in turn create new problems and reveal many interesting aspects of old problems in both fundamental and applied research.

materials

The basis of the development of technology is knowledge of the properties of materials. All spacecraft use a variety of materials in a wide variety of environments.

In the past few years, the number of materials studied and the characteristics of interest to us has increased dramatically. The rapid growth in the number of technical materials used in the creation of spacecraft, as well as the increasing interdependence of spacecraft designs and material properties are illustrated in Table. 1. In 1953, aluminum, magnesium, titanium, steel and special alloys were of interest primarily as aviation materials. Five years later, in 1958, they were widely used in rocket science. In 1963, each of these groups of materials already included hundreds of combinations of elements or components, and the number of materials of interest increased by several thousand. At present, new and improved materials are needed almost everywhere, and the situation is unlikely to change in the future.

Table 1

Materials used in spacecraft structures

Material
Beryllium
Thermal Management Materials
Thermoelectric materials
Photovoltaic materials
Protective coatings
Ceramics
Materials reinforced with threads
Blow away coatings (ablative materials)
Layered materials
Polymers
Refractory metals
Special Alloys
titanium alloys
magnesium alloys
Aluminum alloys

The need for new knowledge in the field of materials science and materials technology resonates with our universities, private companies, independent research organizations and various government bodies. Table 2 gives some idea of ​​the nature and scope of NASA's ongoing research into new materials. These works include both fundamental and applied research. The greatest efforts are concentrated in the field fundamental research in solid state physics and chemistry. Of interest here are the atomic structure of matter, interatomic force interactions, the motion of atoms, and especially the influence of defects commensurate with the size of atoms.

table 2

Materials Research Program

The next category includes structural materials with high specific strength, such as titanium, aluminum and beryllium, heat-resistant and refractory alloys, ceramics and polymers. A special group should include materials for supersonic transport aviation.

There is an ever-increasing interest in the category of materials used in electronics in the NASA program. Research is underway on superconductors and lasers. In the semiconductor group, both organic and inorganic materials are studied. Research is also being carried out in the field of thermoelectronics.

Finally, the materials research program concludes with a very general consideration of the questions practical use materials.

To show the potential applications of the results of materials research in the future, I will focus on studies related to the study of the influence of the spatial arrangement of atoms on the frictional properties of metals.

If it were possible to reduce the friction between metal surfaces in contact, then this would make it possible to improve almost all types of mechanisms with moving parts. In most cases, the friction between the mating surfaces is high and lubrication is applied to reduce it. However, understanding the mechanism of friction between non-lubricated surfaces is also of great interest.

Figure 1 presents some of the results of research conducted at the Lewis Research Center. The experiments were carried out under conditions of high vacuum, since atmospheric gases pollute surfaces and drastically change their frictional properties. The first important conclusion is that the friction characteristics of pure metals are highly dependent on their natural atomic structure (see the left side of Fig. 1). When metals solidify, the atoms of some form a hexagonal spatial lattice, while the atoms of others form a cubic one. It has been shown that metals with a hexagonal lattice have much less friction than metals with a cubic lattice.

Fig 1. Effect of atomic structure on dry friction (without lubrication).

Fig.2. Requirements for heat-resistant materials.

The Emergency Rescue System, or SAS for short, is a "rocket in a rocket" that crowns the spire of the Union:

The astronauts themselves sit at the bottom of the spire (which has the shape of a cone):

The SAS provides crew rescue both on the launch pad and on any part of the flight. Here it is worth understanding that the probability of getting lyuli at the start is many times higher than in flight. It's like a light bulb - most of the burnout occurs at the moment of switching on. Therefore, the first thing the SAS does at the time of the accident is take off into the air and take the astronauts somewhere far away from the spreading explosion:

The SAS engines are alerted 15 minutes before the launch of the rocket.

And now the most interesting. The ACS is activated by two attendants who simultaneously press the button at the command of the flight director. Moreover, the team is usually the name of some geographical object. For example, the flight director says: "Altai" and the attendants activate the SAS. Everything is like 50 years ago.

The worst thing is not landing, but overload. In the news with the rescued astronauts, an overload was immediately indicated - 9g. This is extremely bad for ordinary person overload, but for a trained astronaut it is not fatal and not even dangerous. For example, in 1975, Vasily Lazarev pulled out an overload of 20, and according to some reports, 26G. He did not die, but the consequences put an end to his career.

As it was said, SAS is already more than 50 years old. During this time, it has undergone many changes, but formally the basic principles of its work have not changed. Electronics has appeared, a lot of different sensors, reliability has increased, but the rescue of astronauts still looks like it would have looked 50 years ago. Why? Because gravity, overcoming the first cosmic velocity and the human factor is a quantity, apparently unchanged:

The first successful testing of CAC was carried out in the 67th year. Actually, they tried to fly around the moon unmanned. But the first pancake came out lumpy, so we decided to test CAC at the same time, so that at least some result would be positive. The descent vehicle landed undamaged, and if there were people inside, they would still be alive.

And this is what the SAS looks like in flight:

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Over the past almost seven decades since the first space launch (not counting the previous twenty years of research and experiments), spacecraft (SC) designs have been continuously improved. A significant contribution to the evolution of spacecraft designs was made by the so-called "test" spacecraft, which were designed specifically for testing and testing structural elements, systems, assemblies, assemblies and blocks in real space flight conditions, ways of their optimal application, possible ways of their unification.

If in the USSR various modifications of the spacecraft of practically only one Kosmos series were widely used as automatic test spacecraft, then in the USA there was a whole range of spacecraft: ATS, GGTS, 0V, Dodge, TTS, SERT", "RW", etc.

Despite the great variety of spacecraft designs, common to all devices is the presence of a housing with a set of various structural elements (the so-called "supporting" equipment) and special (target) electronic equipment.

The spacecraft body is a structural and layout basis for the installation and placement of all its elements and related equipment. For example, for an automatic spacecraft, the supporting equipment provides for at least the following onboard systems: orientation and stabilization, thermal control, power supply, telemetry, trajectory measurements, control and navigation, command and software, various executive bodies etc. on manned spacecraft and space stations in addition, there are life support systems, emergency rescue, etc.

In turn, the target equipment of the spacecraft can be optical (optical-electronic), photographic, television, infrared, radar, radio engineering, spectrometric, x-ray, radio communication and relaying, radio engineering, radiometric, calorimetric, etc.

All these systems (their structure, functions, configuration, etc.) use the most modern ECB.

Naturally, the configurations of the spacecraft depend on their purpose and, therefore, differ significantly - these are the launching of the spacecraft to the required trajectories, the accelerating and braking blocks of the spacecraft, including sustainer and corrective engines, fuel compartments, units and service systems (ensure the transfer of the spacecraft from low orbit to a higher or interplanetary one, carry out reverse transitions - from a high orbit to a low one, correction of trajectory parameters, etc.).

The concept of "layout" of a spacecraft is inextricably linked with the design of a spacecraft - the most rational and most dense spatial arrangement of the constituent elements. In this case, the internal and external (aerodynamic) layout of the spacecraft are distinguished.

The task of developing the design of a particular spacecraft is quite complex, since it is necessary to take into account a lot of factors that often contradict each other. For example, it is necessary to ensure the minimum number of communications between the spacecraft and the ground complex (especially for launch vehicles), the safety and comfort of the crew (for manned spacecraft), safe operation and maintenance at the launch position and in flight, ensuring the specified parameters of stability, controllability, thermal conditions and aerodynamic characteristics of the spacecraft, and much more.

The task of spacecraft designers is complicated by the fact that the criterion for the optimality of their solution is not only the minimization of the mass of the spacecraft, but also its cost and terms of creation with guaranteed provision of reliability parameters, multifunctionality, etc.

The first spacecraft of the Earth "Vostok 1", which lifted the first man into low Earth orbit.

As you know, the spacecraft that launched from the spacecraft performed only one (but the first in the history of mankind) revolution around the planet Earth, and the flight took place completely in automatic mode, in which the first cosmonaut was like a “passenger”, ready at any moment to switch control to himself . Although in reality, according to our classification, it was not a “manned” flight, but a fully automatic flight, but this is just the case when the classification does not always correctly reflect the essence of the ongoing process (phenomenon, event).

One of the first (1977) long-range spacecraft (the so-called "space probe") of the Voyager series (the most famous spacecraft are Voyager-1 and Voyager-2). According to some literary sources, this 723-kilogram automatic probe, launched on September 5, 1977 and intended for research and its immediate environs, to the surprise of its creators, is still in normal working order and, in connection with this circumstance, even performs a new (additional) mission - to determine the location of the boundaries of the solar system, including "" (), although, according to the intention of the developers, its original main mission was only to study two - and (it was the first probe to take detailed pictures of all the satellites of these planets)

Such a long active existence of spacecraft is primarily due to the
optimal engineering decisions made when creating an electronic
on-board equipment, a competent choice of the appropriate ECB for the complex
tations of its onboard systems.

The spaceship reminds submarine: here and there the crew is forced to live in a pressurized cabin, completely isolated from external environment. The composition, pressure, temperature and humidity of the air inside the cabin will be regulated special apparatus. But the advantage of a spacecraft over a submarine is the smaller difference between the pressure inside the cabin and outside. And the smaller this difference, the thinner the walls of the case can be.

The sun's rays can be used to heat and illuminate the ship's cabin. The skin of the ship, like the earth's atmosphere, delays the ultraviolet rays of the Sun penetrating interplanetary space, which are harmful to the human body in large quantities. For better protection during collisions with meteoric bodies, it is advisable to make the ship's skin multilayered.

The design of a spacecraft depends on its purpose. A ship to land on the moon will be very different from a ship designed to fly around it; a ship to Mars must be built differently from a ship to Venus; a rocket ship powered by thermochemical fuel will be significantly different from a nuclear ship.

A spacecraft powered by thermochemical fuel designed to fly on artificial satellite, will be a multi-stage rocket the size of an airship. At launch, such a rocket should weigh several hundred tons, and its payload is about a hundred times less. Tightly adjacent stages will be enclosed in a streamlined body to better overcome air resistance when flying in the atmosphere. A relatively small cabin for the crew and a cabin for the rest of the payload will apparently be located in the bow of the ship. Since the crew will have to spend only a short time on board such a ship (less than an hour), there will be no need for complex equipment, which will be equipped with interplanetary ships designed for a long flight. Flight control and all measurements will be carried out automatically.

The spent stages of the rocket can be lowered back to Earth either by parachute or with the help of retractable wings that turn the stage into a glider.

Consider another version of the spacecraft (see Fig. 8, center, on pages 24-25). The ship will go from an artificial satellite into flight around the moon for a long survey of its surface without landing. After completing the task, he will return directly to Earth. As you can see, this ship consists mainly of two twin rockets with three pairs of cylindrical tanks filled with fuel and oxidizer, and two space gliders with retractable wings designed to descend to the Earth's surface. The ship does not need a streamlined skin, since the launch is made outside the atmosphere.

Such a ship will be completely built and tested on Earth, and then transferred to the interplanetary station disassembled. Fuel, equipment, food supplies and oxygen for breathing will be delivered there in separate batches.

After the ship is assembled at the interplanetary station, it will go further into world space.

Fuel and oxidizer will enter the engine from the central cylindrical tanks, which are the main cabins of the spacecraft, temporarily filled with fuel. They are emptied a few minutes after takeoff. Temporarily the crew is located in a less comfortable glider cockpit.

It is enough to open a small valve connecting the tanks with airless space, so that the remaining fuel instantly evaporates. Then the cockpit tanks are filled with air, and the crew enters them from the glider; here the astronauts will spend the rest of the flight.

Having flown to the Moon, the ship turns into its artificial satellite. For this, fuel and an oxidizer located in the rear side tanks are used. After using the fuel, the tanks are unhooked. When on -

The return time will come and the engine will be turned on. Fuel for this purpose is stored in the front side tanks. Before diving into the Earth's atmosphere, the crew transfers to space gliders, which are unhooked from the rest of the ship, which continues to circle the Earth. The glider enters the Earth's atmosphere and, maneuvering retractable wings, descends.

When flying with the engine off, people and objects on the ship will be weightless. This presents a great inconvenience. Designers may have to create artificial gravity on board the ship.

The ship shown in Fig. 8 is built exactly on this principle. Its two components, taking off as a whole, are then separated from each other, remaining, however, connected by cables, and with the help of small rocket engines are driven in a circular motion around a common center of gravity (Fig. 6). After the required rotational speed is reached, the motors are turned off and the movement continues by inertia. The resulting centrifugal force, according to the idea of ​​Tsiolkovsky, should replace the travel