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

Dashboard ship "Vostok-1" Yu. A. Gagarin. Central Museum of the Armed Forces, Moscow

The total mass of the spacecraft reached 4.73 tons, the length (without antennas) was 4.4 m, and the maximum diameter was 2.43 m.

The ship consisted of a spherical descent vehicle (weight 2.46 tons and a diameter of 2.3 m) also performing the functions of an orbital compartment and a conical instrument compartment (weight 2.27 tons and a maximum diameter of 2.43 m). Mass of thermal protection from 1.3 tons to 1.5 tons. The compartments were mechanically connected to each other using metal bands and pyrotechnic locks. The ship was equipped with systems: automatic and manual control, automatic orientation to the Sun, manual orientation to the Earth, life support (designed to maintain an internal atmosphere close in its parameters to the Earth's atmosphere for 10 days), command-logical control, power supply, thermal control and landing . To ensure the tasks of human work in outer space, the ship was equipped with autonomous and radio telemetry equipment for monitoring and recording parameters characterizing the state of the astronaut, structures and systems, ultrashortwave and shortwave equipment for two-way radiotelephone communication of the astronaut with ground stations, a command radio link, a program-time device, a television system with two transmitting cameras for observing the astronaut from the Earth, a radio system for monitoring the parameters of the orbit and direction finding of the spacecraft, a TDU-1 braking propulsion system, and other systems.

The weight of the spacecraft together with the last stage of the launch vehicle was 6.17 tons, and their length in conjunction was 7.35 m.

When developing the descent vehicle, the designers chose an axisymmetric spherical shape, as the most well-studied and having stable aerodynamic characteristics for all ranges of angles of attack on different speeds movement. This solution made it possible to provide an acceptable mass of the apparatus's thermal protection and to implement the simplest ballistic scheme for deorbiting. At the same time, the choice of a ballistic descent scheme determined the high overloads that a person working on board the ship had to experience.

The descent vehicle had two windows, one of which was located on the entrance hatch, just above the cosmonaut's head, and the other, equipped with a special orientation system, in the floor at his feet. The astronaut, dressed in a spacesuit, was placed in a special ejection seat. At the last stage of landing, after braking the descent vehicle in the atmosphere, at an altitude of 7 km, the cosmonaut ejected from the cabin and made a parachute landing. In addition, the possibility of landing an astronaut inside the descent vehicle was provided. The descent vehicle had its own parachute, but was not equipped with the means to perform a soft landing, which threatened the person remaining in it with a serious bruise during a joint landing.

The equipment of the Vostok ships was made as simple as possible. The return maneuver was usually processed by an automatic command transmitted by radio from Earth. For the purpose of horizontal orientation of the ship, infrared sensors were used. Alignment along the orbit axis was performed using stellar and solar orientation sensors.

In the event of failure of automatic systems, the astronaut could switch to manual control. This was possible due to the use of the original optical orientator "Vzor" installed on the cabin floor. An annular mirror zone was placed on the porthole, and arrows indicating the direction of displacement of the earth's surface were applied on a special matte screen. When the spacecraft was correctly oriented relative to the horizon, all eight viewfinders of the mirror zone were illuminated by the sun. Observation of the earth's surface through the central part of the screen ("Earth run") made it possible to determine the direction of flight.

Another device helped the astronaut decide when to start the return maneuver - a small globe with a clockwork, which showed the current position of the spacecraft above the Earth. Knowing starting point position, it was possible to determine with relative accuracy the place of the upcoming landing.

This manual system could only be used in the illuminated part of the orbit. At night, the Earth could not be observed through the Vzor. Automatic system orientation was to be able to work at any time.

The Vostok ships were not adapted for manned flights to the moon, and also did not allow the possibility of flights of people who did not undergo special training. This was largely due to the design of the ship's descent module, affectionately referred to as Ball. The spherical shape of the descent vehicle did not provide for the use of orientation thrusters. The device looked like a ball, the main weight of which was concentrated in one part, thus, when moving along a ballistic trajectory, it automatically turned its heavy part down. Ballistic descent meant eight times the G-force on return from Earth orbit and twenty times on return from the Moon. A similar ballistic apparatus was the Mercury capsule; the Gemini, Apollo and Soyuz ships, due to their shape and displaced center of gravity, made it possible to reduce the experienced overloads (3 G for returning from near-Earth orbit and 8 G for returning from the Moon), and had sufficient maneuverability to change the landing point.

The Soviet ships "Vostok" and "Voskhod" as well as the American "Mercury" were not able to perform orbital maneuvers, allowing only rotations relative to the main axes. The re-start of the propulsion system was not provided, it was used only for the purpose of performing a return braking maneuver. Nevertheless, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, before starting the development of the Soyuz, considered the possibility of creating a maneuverable Vostok. This project involved docking the ship with special booster modules, which in the future would allow it to be used in the task of flying around the moon. Later, the idea of ​​a maneuverable version of the Vostok ship was implemented in the Zenit reconnaissance satellites and the specialized Foton satellites.

The spacecraft resembles a 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 by a 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; rocket ship on thermochemical fuel will differ significantly from a nuclear ship.

The spacecraft on thermochemical fuel, designed to fly to an 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 one, 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 rotation speed is reached, the motors are turned off and the movement continues by inertia. The centrifugal force that arises in this case, according to the idea of ​​Tsiolkovsky, should replace the travel

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 command is usually the name of some geographical feature. 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 an extremely unpleasant overload for an ordinary person, 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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Spaceship. Surely many of you, having heard this phrase, imagine something huge, complex and densely populated, a whole city in space. This is how I once imagined spaceships, and numerous science fiction films and books actively contribute to this.

It's probably good that the authors of films are limited only by fantasy, unlike space technology design engineers. At least in the cinema, we can enjoy gigantic volumes, hundreds of compartments and thousands of crew members...

A real spaceship is not at all impressive in size:

The photo shows the Soviet Soyuz-19 spacecraft, taken by American astronauts from the Apollo spacecraft. It can be seen that the ship is quite small, and given that the habitable volume does not occupy the entire ship, it is obvious that it must be quite crowded there.

It is not surprising: large size is a large mass, and mass is enemy number one in astronautics. Therefore, the constructors spaceships they try to make them as light as possible, often to the detriment of the comfort of the crew. Notice how crowded the Soyuz is:

American ships in this regard are not particularly different from Russian ones. For example, here is a photo of Ed White and Jim McDivit in the Gemini spacecraft.

Only the crews of the Space Shuttle could boast of at least some freedom of movement. They had two relatively spacious compartments at their disposal.

Flight deck (actually the control cabin):

The middle deck (this is a household compartment with sleeping places, a toilet, a pantry and an airlock):

Unfortunately, the Soviet ship Buran, similar in size and layout, has never flown in a manned mode, like the TKS, which still has a record habitable volume among all ships ever designed.

But habitable volume is far from the only requirement for a spacecraft. I have heard statements like this: "They put a man in an aluminum can and sent him to spin around Mother Earth." This sentence is, of course, incorrect. So how is a spaceship different from a simple metal barrel?

And the fact that the spacecraft must:
- Provide the crew with a breathable gas mixture,
- remove carbon dioxide and water vapor exhaled by the crew from the habitable volume,
- Provide an acceptable temperature regime for the crew,
- Have a sealed volume sufficient for the life of the crew,
- Provide the ability to control the orientation in space and (optionally) the ability to perform orbital maneuvers,
- Have the necessary supplies of food and water for the life of the crew,
- Ensure the possibility of a safe return of the crew and cargo to the ground,
- Be as light as possible
- Have an emergency rescue system that allows you to return the crew to the ground when emergency at any stage of the flight,
- Be very reliable. Any one failure of the equipment must not lead to the cancellation of the flight, any second failure must not endanger the life of the crew.

As you can see, this is no longer a simple barrel, but a complex technological device, stuffed with a variety of equipment, having engines and a supply of fuel for them.

Here, for example, is the layout of the first-generation Soviet spacecraft Vostok.

It consists of a sealed spherical capsule and a conical instrument-aggregate compartment. Almost all ships have such an arrangement, in which most of the instruments are placed in a separate unpressurized compartment. This is necessary to save weight: if all the instruments are placed in a sealed compartment, this compartment would turn out to be quite large, and since it needs to keep atmospheric pressure inside and withstand significant mechanical and thermal loads during entry into the dense layers of the atmosphere during descent to the ground, the walls it must be thick, strong, which makes the whole structure very heavy. And an unpressurized compartment, which will separate from the descent vehicle upon return to earth and burn up in the atmosphere, does not need strong heavy walls. The descent vehicle without unnecessary instruments during the return turns out to be smaller and, accordingly, lighter. A spherical shape is also given to it to reduce mass, because of all geometric bodies of the same volume, a sphere has the smallest surface area.

The only spacecraft where all the equipment was placed in a sealed capsule is the American Mercury. Here is his photo in the hangar:

One person could fit in this capsule, and then with difficulty. Realizing the inefficiency of such an arrangement, the Americans made their next series of Gemini ships with a detachable leaky instrument-aggregate compartment. In the photo, this is the back of the ship in white:

By the way, in White color this compartment is painted for a reason. The fact is that the walls of the compartment are pierced by many tubes through which water circulates. This is a system for removing excess heat received from the Sun. Water takes heat from inside the habitable compartment and gives it to the surface of the instrument-aggregate compartment, from where heat is radiated into space. To make these radiators less heated in direct sunlight, they were painted white.

On the Vostok ships, the radiators were located on the surface of the conical instrument-aggregate compartment and were closed with shutters similar to blinds. opening different amount dampers, it was possible to regulate the heat transfer of the radiators, and hence the temperature regime inside the ship.

On Soyuz ships and their cargo counterparts Progress, the heat removal system is similar to Gemini. Pay attention to the color of the surface of the instrument-aggregate compartment. Of course, white :)

Inside the instrument-assembly compartment are sustainer engines, low-thrust shunting engines, a supply of fuel for all this stuff, batteries, oxygen and water supplies, and part of the on-board electronics. Outside, radio communication antennas, proximity antennas, various orientation sensors and solar panels.

The descent vehicle, which simultaneously serves as the cabin of the spacecraft, contains only those elements that are needed during the descent of the vehicle in the atmosphere and a soft landing, as well as what should be directly accessible to the crew: a control panel, a radio station, an emergency supply of oxygen, parachutes , cassettes with lithium hydroxide to remove carbon dioxide, soft landing engines, lodgements (chairs for astronauts), emergency rescue kits in case of landing at an off-design point, and, of course, the astronauts themselves.

Soyuz ships have one more compartment - household:

It contains everything you need on a long flight, but without which you can do without at the stage of launching the ship into orbit and upon landing: scientific instruments, food supplies, Sanitation device (toilet), spacesuits for extravehicular activities, sleeping bags and other household items. items.

There is a well-known case with the Soyuz TM-5 spacecraft, when, in order to save fuel, the household compartment was fired not after issuing a braking impulse to deorbit, but before. Only now there was no braking impulse: the orientation system failed, then it was not possible to start the engine. As a result, the cosmonauts had to stay in orbit for another day, and the toilet remained in the shot-out amenity compartment. It is difficult to convey what inconvenience the astronauts experienced during these days, until, finally, they managed to land safely. After this incident, they decided to score on such fuel economy and shoot the household compartment together with the instrument-aggregate after braking.

That's how many all sorts of difficulties turned out to be in the "bank". We will separately go over each type of spacecraft of the USSR, the USA and China in the following articles. Stay tuned.

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 at 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 I was very interested, 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 constructions spacecraft

The demand for new knowledge in materials science and 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. Here, the atomic structure of matter, interatomic force interactions, the motion of atoms, and especially the influence of defects commensurate with the size of atoms are of interest.

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 in high vacuum conditions, since atmospheric gases pollute surfaces and drastically change their frictional properties. The first important conclusion is that the friction characteristics pure metals are highly dependent on their natural atomic structure (see left side 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.