Development of rockets. (History of rocketry)

Hydraulics

 

Hydraulics is a branch of science concerned with the practical applications of fluids, primarily liquids, in motion. It is related to fluid mechanics, which in large part provides its theoretical foundation. Hydraulics deals with such matters as the flow of liquids in pipes, rivers, and channels and their confinement by dams and tanks. Some of its principles apply also to gases, usually in cases in which variations in density are relatively small. Consequently, the scope of hydraulics extends to such mechanical devices as fans and gas turbines and to pneumatic control systems.

Liquids in motion or under pressure did useful work for man for many centuries before French scientist-philosopher Blaise Pascal and Swiss physicist Daniel Bernoulli formulated the laws on which modern hydraulic-power technology is based. Pascal's law, formulated in about 1650, states that pressure in a liquid is transmitted equally in all directions; i.e, when water is made to fill a closed container, the application of pressure at any point will be transmitted to all sides of the container. In the hydraulic press, Pascal's law is used to gain an increase in force; a small force applied to a small piston in a small cylinder is transmitted through a tube to a large cylinder, where it presses equally against all sides of the cylinder, including the large piston.

Bernoulli's law, formulated about a century later, states that energy in a fluid is due to elevation, motion, and pressure, and if there are no losses due to friction and no work done, the sum of the energies remains constant. Thus, velocity energy, deriving from motion, can be partly converted to pressure energy by enlarging the cross section of a pipe, which slows down the flow but increases the area against which the fluid is pressing.

Until the 19th century it was not possible to develop velocities and pressures much greater than those provided by nature, but the invention of pumps brought a vast potential for application of the discoveries of Pascal and Bernoulli. In 1882 the city of London built a hydraulic system that delivered pressurized water through street mains to drive machinery in factories. In 1906 an important advance in hydraulic techniques was made when an oil hydraulic system was installed to raise and control the guns of the USS “Virginia.” In the 1920s, self-contained hydraulic units consisting of a pump, controls, and motor were developed, opening the way to applications in machine tools, automobiles, farm and earth-moving machinery, locomotives, ships, airplanes, and spacecraft.

In hydraulic-power systems there are five elements: the driver, the pump, the control valves, the motor, and the load. The driver may be an electric motor or an engine of any type. The pump acts mainly to increase pressure. The motor may be a counterpart of the pump, transforming hydraulic input into mechanical output. Motors may produce either rotary or reciprocating motion in the load.

The growth of fluid-power technology since World War II has been phenomenal. In the operation and control of machine tools, farm machinery, construction machinery, and mining machinery, fluid power can compete successfully with mechanical and electrical systems. Its chief advantages are flexibility and the ability to multiply forces efficiently; it also provides fast and accurate response to controls. Fluid power can provide a force of a few ounces or one of thousands of tons.

Hydraulic-power systems have become one of the major energy-transmission technologies utilized by all phases of industrial, agricultural, and defense activity. Modern aircraft, for example, use hydraulic systems to activate their controls and to operate landing gears and brakes. Virtually all missiles, as well as their ground-support equipment, utilize fluid power. Automobiles use hydraulic-power systems in their transmissions, brakes, and steering mechanisms. Mass production and its offspring, automation, in many industries have their foundations in the utilization of fluid-power systems.

 

Fluid mechanics

 

Fluid mechanics is a science concerned with the response of fluids to forces exerted upon them. It is a branch of classical physics with applications of great importance in hydraulic and aeronautical engineering, chemical engineering, meteorology, and zoology.

The most familiar fluid is of course water, and an encyclopedia of the 19th century probably would have dealt with the subject under the separate headings of hydrostatics, the science of water at rest, and hydrodynamics, the science of water in motion. Archimedes founded hydrostatics in about 250 BC when, according to legend, he leapt out of his bath and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse crying “Eureka!”; it has undergone rather little development since. The foundations of hydrodynamics, on the other hand, were not laid until the 18th century when mathematicians such as Leonard Euler and Daniel Bernoulli began to explore the consequences, for a virtually continuous medium like water, of the dynamic principles that Newton had enunciated for systems composed of discrete particles. Their work was continued in the 19th century by several mathematicians and physicists of the first rank, notably G.G. Stokes and William Thomson. By the end of the century explanations had been found for a host of intriguing phenomena having to do with the flow of water through tubes and orifices, the waves that ships moving through water leave behind them, raindrops on windowpanes, and the like. There was still no proper understanding, however, of problems as fundamental as that of water flowing past a fixed obstacle and exerting a drag force upon it; the theory of potential flow, which worked so well in other contexts, yielded results that at relatively high flow rates were grossly at variance with experiment. This problem was not properly understood until 1904, when the German physicist Ludwig Prandtl introduced the concept of the boundary layer. Prandtl's career continued into the period in which the first manned aircraft were developed. Since that time, the flow of air has been of as much interest to physicists and engineers as the flow of water, and hydrodynamics has, as a consequence, become fluid dynamics. The term fluid mechanics embraces both fluid dynamics and the subject still generally referred to as hydrostatics.

One other representative of the 20th century who deserves mention here besides Prandtl is Geoffrey Taylor of England. Taylor remained a classical physicist while most of his contemporaries were turning their attention to the problems of atomic structure and quantum mechanics, and he made several unexpected and important discoveries in the field of fluid mechanics. The richness of fluid mechanics is due in large part to a term in the basic equation of the motion of fluids which is nonlinear - i.e., one that involves the fluid velocity twice over. It is characteristic of systems described by nonlinear equations that under certain conditions they become unstable and begin behaving in ways that seem at first sight to be totally chaotic. In the case of fluids, chaotic behaviour is very common and is called turbulence. Mathematicians have now begun to recognize patterns in chaos that can be analyzed fruitfully, and this development suggests that fluid mechanics will remain a field of active research well into the 21st century.

 

 

Kinds of spacecraft

Spacecraft is a general term that includes sounding rockets, unmanned artificial satellites and space probes, space stations, and vehicles for carrying humans to and from space. With the exceptions of the sounding rocket and the space shuttle, spacecraft are considered separately from the rocket-powered vehicle that launches the spacecraft into orbit or boosts it away from Earth's vicinity (see launch vehicle).

A space probe is an unmanned spacecraft that is given a velocity great enough to allow it to escape Earth's gravitational attraction. Space probes may be classed as lunar, planetary, or deep-space. A deep-space probe is a probe sent beyond the Earth-Moon system; if sent to explore other planets, it is also called a planetary probe.

Other classifications of spacecraft are manned or unmanned, active or passive. A passive satellite transmits no radio signals. It may be tracked optically or with radar, and radio communications signals may be “bounced” off its surface. Active satellites send out radio signals to make tracking easier and to transmit data from their instruments to ground stations or other craft.

A space station is an artificial structure placed in orbit and equipped to support human habitation for extended periods.

Spacecraft differ greatly in size, shape, complexity, and purpose. Those that share similarities in design, function, or both are often grouped into program families—e.g., Soyuz, Venera, Salyut, and Gorizont in the U.S.S.R. (later Russia); Explorer, Apollo, Voyager, and Navstar in the United States; SPOT in France; and Meteosat developed by the European Space Agency. Lightness of weight and functional reliability are primary features of spacecraft design. Depending on their mission, spacecraft may spend minutes, days, months, or years in the environment of space. Mission functions must be performed while exposed to high vacuum, extreme variations in temperature, and strong radiation.

A general differentiation of spacecraft is by function—scientific or applications. A scientific satellite or probe carries instruments to obtain data on magnetic fields, space radiation, the Sun or other stars, planets and their moons, and other astronomical objects and phenomena. Applications spacecraft have utilitarian tasks; examples are Earth observation, military reconnaissance, telecommunications, and navigation and global positioning satellites.

Manned Flights

 

In the last years a new line has emerged in cosmonautics. This line is manned flights in long-life orbital scientific stations. The first vehicle of this kind was the Salyut orbital station. The flights of the Salyut orbital station lasted nearly six months and consisted of several stages. The first stage was marked by the joint flight of the station with the Soyuz-10 spaceship. The crew executed the rendezvous and docking of the Soyuz-10 spaceship to the Salyut station. They checked the functioning of the onboard systems ensuring the delivery of the expeditions aboard the station. After the station had been a month and a half in orbit the Soyuz-11 transport spaceship delivered another crew to the station, which fulfilled a vast research program. The cosmonauts conducted a number of investigations and experiments in the interests of the national economy, they executed observations and took photographs of geological and geographical objects of the Earth’s surface, of atmospheric formations, of the snow and ice cover of the planet.

During this flight the crew carried out a considerable program of medical and biological experiments, measurements and tests to determine the optimal conditions for the life and work of cosmonauts and to establish the possibilities for the fulfillment of different jobs in space. After three and a half month manned flight the Salyut station functioned automatically.

Manned flights of our crews in circumterrestrial space cover a wide range of problems and tasks associated with space research and exploration. Among these the main are:

- improvement of manned spacecraft, development of methods of navigation and control of spacecraft;

- investigation of the physical characteristics of near space, of phenomena and processes occurring in it;

- astrophysical research and observation of the Sun, Moon, stars and planets;

- observation and survey of geological and geographical objects on the Earth’s surface to utilize the data thus obtained for the benefit of the national economy;

- observation and photography of atmospheric formations, the snow and ice cover of the Earth to use the data obtained in short and long-term weather forecasting;

- medical and biological research to study the effect of space flight factors on the human organism.

These tasks were being accomplished both with the help of orbital manned and automatic stations of the Soyuz spaceships. The space crew conducted a thorough comprehensive check and trial of the improved ship’s systems.

On the whole it was a test flight which confirmed the reliability of improved design, on-board systems and units.

The next purpose of the next flight was to conduct astrophysical observations of stars in the ultraviolet band.

 

Space tourism

The passed XX century was marked by incredible achievements, which were not known in the history of the human civilization before. The flight of a human being into space is considered to be a culmination of scientific-technical revolution of the last century: that was the Soviet fighter pilot, the first cosmonaut of the planet Yuri Gagarin who encircled the Earth on April 12, 1961. From this moment on the active exploration of space has started - new spacecraft were designed, automatic vehicles were sent to the planets of the Solar system, space stations were launched into orbit, a human being went into outer space and visited the Moon. The development of space industry has drawn more and more people of different professions in it - i.e. scientists, engineers, designers, test pilots. But only a few out of the hundreds thousands specialists were given a unique chance to fly to space.

Nowadays the space technologies are gradually transferring from the sphere of experimental and
scientific research into the field of practical implementation. And now it's a high time for everyone not
only to take use of the satellite communication, but also to fly into the real space without being a
professional cosmonaut.

April 28, 2001 has become an official birthday of the space tourism - it was then that the "Soyuz TM-32" space vehicle having had aboard the first space tourist in the world was launched into space from
the Baikonur launch site at 11:37 Moscow time. The American millionaire Dennis Tito has spent 7 days
in orbit and dedicated his in-flight time to the Earth photographing from space. This mission
successfully ended on May 6, 2001 at 9:41 Moscow time, when the descent capsule softly landed in
the Kazakh steppes.

"Around 400 people have already been to space. It's a great privilege for me - to observe the Earth from space, encircling it every 90 minutes. My flight into space is not a walk, it is fulfillment of my life­long dream", - said Dennis Tito prior to take-off.

One year later, on April 25, 2002 the space tourist N2, resident of the South African Republic Mark Shuttleworth was launched into space. In contrast to Dennis Tito the second space tourist was allowed to freely move along the space station. In accordance with the agreement between ROSAVIAKOSMOS and NASA Mr. Shuttleworth was permitted to use onboard notebook computers for sending and receiving the e-mail. In addition, he was given a certain time for using the US communication system for down linking video and photo footage. When in space Mark Shuttleworth carried out his own scientific-research program, as well as participated in multiple press conferences (live broadcasting was transmitted in 30 countries of Africa).

After his 10-day space mission Mr. Shuttleworth has announced his firm desire to fulfill a new space mission "at any time". In order to commemorate this incredible event the second space tourist
purchased a mock-up of the "Soyuz TM-33" descent capsule, which had successfully delivered him
back to the Earth, as well as his space suit.

ATLAS aerospace company offers a real flight into space - the most unbelievable and challenging adventure. If you are able to afford this unusual space travel they will make your dream come true.

UFO (Visiting the aliens)

A lot of people say that they have seen UFOs. Other people say they have been inside them. Not all of these stories are true; some of them are probably dreams, some stories of meetings with aliens sound true – although we can never be sure.

UFOs sell newspapers, and many newspapermen want to use UFOs in their stories. Because of this, some people have taken hoax photographs of UFOs to sell. Many scientists think that all UFOs are hoaxes. Certainly there have been some very clever hoaxes in the last fifty years.

It’s easy to make a photograph of a UFO. You need a small model of a spaceship. You photograph this one, and then take another photograph of the place where you want people to see the UFO. There are many photographs of UFOs taken by a man called George Adamski. Many people now believe that these are hoaxes.

There are also photographs of aliens. Many of these are probably hoaxes as well. Sometimes people see strange things in the sky, and they think that they are UFOs. When experts look carefully at them they sometimes discover that they are airplanes, balloons or even meteors.

Other photographs of UFOs look like flying sauces, but are probably just birds. Sometimes people have taken a photograph of a building or of something in the sky. When they look at the photograph later, they see a UFO. Often, this is a reflection of light in the lens of the camera. There are even photographs taken on the moon which show UFOs. These are probably just reflections, although some people think that they are aliens watching the spacemen.

Most experts think that most UFO stories are not real; but there are still a few stories which are very difficult to explain.

Gagarin, Yury Alekseyevich

born March 9, 1934, near Gzhatsk, RussianS.F.S.R.

died March 27, 1968, near Moscow

 

Soviet cosmonaut who in 1961 became the first man to travel into space.

 

The son of a carpenter on a collective farm, Gagarin graduated as a molder from a trade school near Moscow in 1951. He continued his studies at the industrial college at Saratov and concurrently took a course in flying. On completing this course he entered the Soviet Air Force cadet school at Orenburg, from which he graduated in 1957.

Gagarin's 4 3/4-ton Vostok 1 spacecraft was launched at 9:07 AM Moscow time on April 12, 1961, orbited the Earth once in 1 hour 29 minutes at a maximum altitude of 187 miles (301 kilometres), and landed at 10:55 AM in the Soviet Union. His spaceflight brought him immediate worldwide fame; he was awarded the Order of Lenin and given the titles of Hero of the Soviet Union and Pilot Cosmonaut of the Soviet Union. Monuments were raised to him and streets renamed in his honour across the Soviet Union.

He never went into space again but took an active part in training other cosmonauts. He made several tours to other nations following his historic flight, and from 1962 he served as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet. Gagarin was killed with another pilot in the crash of a two-seat jet aircraft while on what was described as a routine training flight. His ashes were placed in a niche in the Kremlin wall. After his death in 1968 the town of Gzhatsk was renamed Gagarin.

 

 

Gagarin’s First Flight

On April 12, 1961, Soviet Air Force pilot Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, riding atop a powerful booster rocket, inside the Vostok spaceship developed by Chief Designer Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, ascended into low Earth orbit.

The first ever manned space mission and a great boost to Soviet science and technology in the eyes of the world ensured that Gagarin entered the ranks of the immortals.

Despite many sensational contemporary stories of cosmonauts being stranded and dying in orbit, or returning to Earth in a mentally unbalanced state and other fates, it is now established that Gagarin’s flight was the first attempt by the Soviets to launch a manned spacecraft.

A young pilot risked his life to pave the new frontier for humanity.

Countless books and films have been made which glorify him and the achievement of that day in 1961.

Gagarin was chosen from an initial batch of 20 candidates who began to report to their training camp in March 1960. Six were chosen from this group to train intensively for the first manned flight into outer space. They were: Yuri Gagarin, German Titov, Gregori Nelyubov, Andrian Nikolaev, Pavel Popovich and Valeri Bykovski.

The small group was chosen after the Vostok simulator had been built on the understanding that it would be too time-consuming to train all the candidates in the group. The simulator instructor was test pilot Mark Gallei.

Gagarin was the first to volunteer to try out the spherical Vostok capsule. By all accounts, Gagarin was the overwhelming choice of the group of candidates to make the first flight, in a poll, only three other names were suggested by the cosmonauts as candidates for the first mission.

The Vostok spacecraft made several flights before the first manned launch, with a mixture of success and failure.

The first Vostok spacecraft launched on May 15, 1960, had no thermal coating; no parachute system and no ejection seat mechanism. It was launched to test flight control systems and was not intended for return to Earth. However, the spacecraft’s infrared sensor failed and the spacecraft was oriented with its braking nozzles downwards. The braking system, when it was activated, fired the spacecraft into a higher orbit.

The second Vostok, launched August 19, 1960, landed safely with the first live specimens flown into space and returned to Earth. These were two dogs – Belka (who vomited on the fourth orbit) and Strelka, two rats, 28 mice and a swarm of pomace flies.

The third mission, launched on December 1, 1960, failed to return safely to Earth when the braking system malfunctioned and the craft burned up in the atmosphere. The test animal aboard became the first to die during reentry from a space mission.

Three weeks late a Vostok was involved in a launch failure. The descent section of the craft was safely separated and the animals aboard survived.

The next launch was on March 9, 1961. The craft carried a dog, Chernushka, and an anthropometric mannequin which held cages with rats, mice and tissue and microorganism samples attached to its chest, stomach and legs. The flight lasted 115 minutes.

Sikorsky, Igor Ivanovich

 

Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky 1889-1972 Today remembered as the father of the helicopter, Igor Sikorsky had three distinct aviation careers. During the birth of aviation, Sikorsky designed and constructed the first successful large four-engine airplanes. After immigrating to America following the Russian revolution, Sikorsky's company built large flying boats for long-range airline service. Not until 1938 did Sikorsky embark on the third of his aviation careers, beginning design work on the helicopters for which he became famous.

Igor was born in the Russian (now Ukrainian) city of Kiev, one of five children. His father taught psychology at the university and established a successful private practice. Igor's mother was also well educated. In one of Igor's earliest memories, his mother described Leonardo da Vinci's (1452-1519) designs for helicopter-like flying machines. Sikorsky spent three years studying at the Imperial Russian Naval Academy, then resigned in 1906 to pursue engineering. While visiting Germany in 1908, Sikorsky read his first account of the Wright brothers' flight. Recognizing his fascination, his older sister Olga offered Igor, then just 19, enough money to purchase an engine and some building materials. But the heavy engines of the time rendered his attempts to build a helicopter hopeless. Always persistent in the face of difficulties, Sikorsky instead designed an airplane and awaited the day when technological developments would make his helicopter dreams possible.

Sikorsky's success with airplanes was remarkable. In less than two years, by 1911, one of his planes set a world speed record. The planes were still frail, though. In one case, Sikorsky crash-landed after a mosquito was caught in his fuel tank and clogged the carburetor. But aviation progressed quickly. In 1913 Sikorsky constructed the first four-engine planes in the world. During World War I these massive planes became the first heavy bombers. Though the army initially found them almost useless, by 1917 the planes were quite successful. Several times they fought off attacks by five or more German fighter planes. No longer did mere mosquitoes' endanger Sikorsky's aircraft. However, the Russian Revolution in 1917 ended Sikorsky's first career in aviation, forcing him to flee Russia for his own safety.

By March 1919 Sikorsky had arrived in New York City, ready to resume work in aviation. The end of the war led to hard times for an aircraft designer. While earning a meager living teaching math to other Russian immigrants, Sikorsky met Elizabeth Semion, and they were married in 1924. By 1923 Sikorsky was back on his wings, and 1928 marked the return of Sikorsky's success, as he became a United States citizen and sold the first of his flying boats to Pan American Airways. These designs culminated in the large "Clipper" planes that introduced long-range commercial air travel in the 1930s. However, again social turmoil over-came the technical innovations of Sikorsky's designs. By 1938 the Great Depression had dried up the market for large luxury flying boats, thus ending Sikorsky's second aviation career.

Fortunately, Sikorsky managed to keep his crack engineering team together as he entered his third aviation career, returning to his life-long dream: building a practical helicopter. By late 1939 the prototype VS-300 was flying. An infusion of military support led to the creation of the R-4, the world's first mass-produced helicopter. Though helicopters played little role in World War II, they were rapidly adapted to military, civilian, and industrial uses after the war. In 1950 Sikorsky accepted the Collier Trophy, one of aviation's highest awards, on behalf of the helicopter industry he had founded. Igor Sikorsky retired in 1957 but remained active as a spokesman for the helicopter industry. He died in 1972 in Easton, Connecticut

 

Sukhoy

 

Sukhoy - officially OKB imeni P.O. Sukhogo also called OKB Sukhoy formerly OKB-51 Russian aerospace design bureau that is the country's second most important producer of jet fighters (after the design bureau MiG). Sukhoy is part of a giant, partiallystate-owned conglomerate of design bureaus and production plants known as AVPK Sukhoy (Aviation Military-Industrial Complex Sukhoy). Headquarters are in Moscow.

The Sukhoy design bureau has three institutional components—the actual bureau, an experimental plant, and a flight-testing station. It has production affiliates at Novosibirsk, Ulan-Ude, Komsomolsk-na-Amure, Dubna, Irkutsk, and Tbilisi, Georgia. Since its origin at the start of World War II, Sukhoy has designed about 100 different aircraft, of which about 50 types have been put into series production. Most of its fighter sales are to Russia, but it also supplies aircraft to other countries including India, China, and Vietnam. At the start of the 21st century Sukhoy began diversifying into the civilian market with the development of sports aircraft, freight vehicles, and passenger aircraft.

The history of the company is closely associated with the career of the noted Soviet aircraft designer Pavel O. Sukhoy. In the 1920s and '30s, as a senior engineer working for Andrey N. Tupolev's Moscow-based design group of the Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI; see Tupolev), Sukhoy designed several bombers and fighters. In September 1939 the Soviet government appointed Sukhoy to head a new experimental design bureau (OKB) at a plant in Kharkov (now Kharkiv, Ukraine), where he designed the Su-6 ground-attack aircraft. Although he produced several excellent designs during the 1930s and '40s, a combination of bad luck, unfavourable wartime government decisions, and internal politics dogged his creations throughout this phase of his career. At the end of World War II the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin assigned him to create a new-generationjet fighter, but because of safety concerns, technical delays, and Stalin's perception that the design was too derivative of the German Me 262, Sukhoy's Su-9 and its subsequent modifications were never adopted for production. Stalin eventually closed his design bureau in November 1949, and Sukhoy's team became a subdivision of the Tupolev design bureau in Moscow.

After Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviet government permitted Sukhoy to regroup his old team as an independent design bureau, first at Plant 1 in Kuybyshev (now Samara) in early 1953 and then at Plant 51 in Moscow later in the year. In 1954 his organization was renamed OKB-51, becoming the foundation of the present-day firm. In the 1950s and '60s the design bureau planned and built a series of new supersonic jet fighters, including the swept-wing Su-7 and delta-wing Su-9 (the latter a different aircraft from the Su-9 of the 1940s). These two aircraft were extensively modified over the years and used in vast numbers by the air forces of the U.S.S.R. and other Warsaw Pact countries. Like other Soviet aviation designers, Sukhoy embraced the concept of incremental development rather than large technological leaps in aircraft design. For example, he improved the Su-9 series into the Su-11 and Su-15 fighter-interceptor series for service with the Soviet air defense forces.

Shortly after Sukoy's death in 1975, his name was added in posthumous recognition to that of the design bureau, which became commonly known as OKB Sukhoy. In the 1970s and early '80s the design bureau produced the high-performance, variable-wing Su-24 multirole aircraft and the Su-25 close-support aircraft. Perhaps the best known Sukhoy design was the Su-27, a long-range, air-superiority fighter recognized for its versatility and overall capabilities. First flown in 1977 and introduced in the mid-1980s, the Su-27 set numerous world records for altitude and takeoff speed and became the forerunner of an entire family of aircraft during the next two decades.

In the 1990s Sukhoy introduced a number of new aircraft. Its Su-34 fighter-bomber began replacing the Su-24, while the redesigned Su-39 ground-attack aircraft began substituting for its older Su-25 variant. Its fifth-generation, multirole, all-weather S-37 Berkut air-superiority fighter, first flown in 1997, was equipped with state-of-the-art electronics, forward-swept wings, and thrust vector control. In competition with MiG for the international market, Sukhoy also continued to develop the lightweight Su-54 fighter. In 1997 the Russian government formed AVPK Sukhoy by combining OKB Sukhoy with its production plant and several other affiliates as part of a general restructuring. Subsequently Sukhoy endured a period of turmoil and internal strife, which included the firing of its top-level leadership.

 

Tupolev

 

Tupolev - officially ANTK imeni A.N. Tupoleva also called ANTK Tupolev formerly OKB-156 Russian aerospace design bureau that is a major producer of civilian passenger airliners and military bombers. As a Soviet agency, it developed the U.S.S.R.'s first commercial jetliner and the world's first supersonic passenger jet. Headquarters are in Moscow.

Tupolev consists of the main design bureau and an experimental plant in Moscow, a branch in Tomilino, a flight-testing station in Zhukovsky, several design affiliates throughout Russia, and a department in Ukraine. It employs about 10,000 people. Since its establishment it has been involved in about 80 aircraft projects, almost half of which have been put into massive series production, and it has supplied more than50 percent of all passenger aircraft operated by the countries of the former Soviet Union. In addition to civilian passenger airliners, Tupolev produces freight aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and test aircraft for research and development projects. Its success in foreign markets has been small compared with other Russian airplane builders.

The origin of the company dates to September 1922 with the formation of a commission to design and develop all-metal military aircraft. Established as part of the Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI), the premiere Soviet aeronautics research institution, the commission was headed by aviation designer and TsAGI co-founder Andrey N. Tupolev. Tupolev's organization, which was set up in Moscow, included both a design team and workshop facilities to construct experimental aircraft for testing. The group's early forays into aircraft design led to the creation of a number of notable Soviet airplanes including the TB-1 (ANT-4), the world's first all-metal, twin-engine, cantilever-wing bomber and one of the largest planes built in the 1920s. Two Tupolev aircraft from the early 1930s, the giant, eight-engine ANT-20 airliner (Maksim Gorky) and the ANT-25 bomber, set world records for size and long-distance flights, respectively. In July 1936 Tupolev's design and construction effort was formally separated from the TsAGIand reorganized as Plant 156; its staff at that time numbered more than 4,000.

In October 1937, during the height of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's great purges, the state secret police arrested and imprisoned Tupolev and a number of associates on charges of sabotage and espionage. Late thefollowing year, the secret police organized the TsKB-29 (Central Design Bureau 29) in the Bolshevo prison near Moscow to allow incarcerated aviation designers to develop military aircraft. There they ordered Tupolev to organize a design team, which, despite the lack of proper facilities for design and testing, managed to build a full-size mock up of a bomber design from timber. Eventually the team was allowed to return to the Plant 156 facilities in Moscow. Still prisoners and under constant guard, they designed and built a new twin-engine tacticalbomber, the Tu-2, which was rolled out in late 1940 and which became the standard tactical bomber in the Soviet air force in the immediate post-World War II era. In July 1941 Tupolev and a number of colleagues were released from incarceration, just in time to assist in evacuating their design bureau to Omsk in western Siberia following the German invasion of the Soviet Union. By the time the group returned to its former facilities in Moscow in late 1943, Tupolev had reestablished it as OKB-156 (Experimental Design Bureau 156).

The first major postwar task for Tupolev's bureau was to produce an exact replica of the Boeing B-29 bomber, based on a complete breakdown and detailed analysis of American planes that had been impounded during the war. The product of this effort was the Tu-4, the first truly strategic Soviet bomber. Tupolev simultaneously converted the Tu-4 for civilian use as the Tu-70, setting a precedent that he would later follow for several other military aircraft. In the 1950s, the design bureau produced the swept-wing turboprop Tu-95 in response to Stalin's request to develop an intercontinental strategic heavy bomber. Known to NATO allies by the designation “Bear,” the Tu-95 became one of the longest-lived aircraft in the Soviet strategic arsenal. In the same period it created the first Soviet jet airliner, the twin-engine Tu-104, which first flew in 1955. The Tu-104 was derived from the bureau's highly successful Tu-16 jet bomber, first flown in 1952. From the late 1950s through the early '80s, the design bureau introduced a new generation of supersonic jet bombers, which included the twin-engine Tu-22, the twin-engine, variable-wing Tu-22M (Tu-26; NATO designation “Backfire”), and the four-engine, variable-wing Tu-160 (“Blackjack”). These were in addition to its development of several civilian airliners, such as the four-turboprop, 220-passenger Tu-114 (the world's largest passenger plane until the Boeing 747) and the160-passenger Tu-154 trijet.

During the 1960s the bureau also undertook the design and construction of a delta-wing supersonic transport, the Tu-144, a counterpart to the British and French Concorde. Tupolev assigned his son, Aleksey, as chief designer for the project. In June 1969 the Tu-144 became the first passenger jet to fly faster than the speed of sound. The aircraft's fuel consumption, however, proved to be much higher than anticipated, shortening its range, and political support for it waned after a production plane crashed at the Paris Air Show in 1973. The Tu-144 was in passenger service only briefly in 1977–78, until a second aircraft caught fire and crashed while ona test flight. In 1996 the design bureau revived the Tu-144 as part of a cooperative project with a number of U.S. aerospace companies to conduct research on a test version of a supersonic airliner.

Aleksey succeeded his father as general designer of the bureau upon the latter's death in 1972. In 1989 the organization became known by the name ANTK imeni A.N. Tupoleva (Aviation Scientific and Technical Complex named after A.N. Tupolev) as part of a restructuring to unite the core design bureau with its production affiliates. In 1992, following the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., it became a joint stock company with the Russian government holding a limited financial interest.

In the 1990s Tupolev struggled to survive in an extremely strained economy. Its few viable projects involved passenger airliners such as the Tu-204, which went into service in 1996. It also developed the Tu-324 passenger airliner, its first aircraft supported solely by financing from a commercial customer, the republic of Tatarstan. Other new products included the Tu-334, a 100-passenger airliner designed to replace its Tu-134 (introduced in the 1960s), and the Tu-330, a wide-body cargo transport for the Russian air force. It also continued to make marginal upgrades in the systems of its older bomber fleets.

 

 

 

 

Hydraulics

 

Hydraulics is a branch of science concerned with the practical applications of fluids, primarily liquids, in motion. It is related to fluid mechanics, which in large part provides its theoretical foundation. Hydraulics deals with such matters as the flow of liquids in pipes, rivers, and channels and their confinement by dams and tanks. Some of its principles apply also to gases, usually in cases in which variations in density are relatively small. Consequently, the scope of hydraulics extends to such mechanical devices as fans and gas turbines and to pneumatic control systems.

Liquids in motion or under pressure did useful work for man for many centuries before French scientist-philosopher Blaise Pascal and Swiss physicist Daniel Bernoulli formulated the laws on which modern hydraulic-power technology is based. Pascal's law, formulated in about 1650, states that pressure in a liquid is transmitted equally in all directions; i.e, when water is made to fill a closed container, the application of pressure at any point will be transmitted to all sides of the container. In the hydraulic press, Pascal's law is used to gain an increase in force; a small force applied to a small piston in a small cylinder is transmitted through a tube to a large cylinder, where it presses equally against all sides of the cylinder, including the large piston.

Bernoulli's law, formulated about a century later, states that energy in a fluid is due to elevation, motion, and pressure, and if there are no losses due to friction and no work done, the sum of the energies remains constant. Thus, velocity energy, deriving from motion, can be partly converted to pressure energy by enlarging the cross section of a pipe, which slows down the flow but increases the area against which the fluid is pressing.

Until the 19th century it was not possible to develop velocities and pressures much greater than those provided by nature, but the invention of pumps brought a vast potential for application of the discoveries of Pascal and Bernoulli. In 1882 the city of London built a hydraulic system that delivered pressurized water through street mains to drive machinery in factories. In 1906 an important advance in hydraulic techniques was made when an oil hydraulic system was installed to raise and control the guns of the USS “Virginia.” In the 1920s, self-contained hydraulic units consisting of a pump, controls, and motor were developed, opening the way to applications in machine tools, automobiles, farm and earth-moving machinery, locomotives, ships, airplanes, and spacecraft.

In hydraulic-power systems there are five elements: the driver, the pump, the control valves, the motor, and the load. The driver may be an electric motor or an engine of any type. The pump acts mainly to increase pressure. The motor may be a counterpart of the pump, transforming hydraulic input into mechanical output. Motors may produce either rotary or reciprocating motion in the load.

The growth of fluid-power technology since World War II has been phenomenal. In the operation and control of machine tools, farm machinery, construction machinery, and mining machinery, fluid power can compete successfully with mechanical and electrical systems. Its chief advantages are flexibility and the ability to multiply forces efficiently; it also provides fast and accurate response to controls. Fluid power can provide a force of a few ounces or one of thousands of tons.

Hydraulic-power systems have become one of the major energy-transmission technologies utilized by all phases of industrial, agricultural, and defense activity. Modern aircraft, for example, use hydraulic systems to activate their controls and to operate landing gears and brakes. Virtually all missiles, as well as their ground-support equipment, utilize fluid power. Automobiles use hydraulic-power systems in their transmissions, brakes, and steering mechanisms. Mass production and its offspring, automation, in many industries have their foundations in the utilization of fluid-power systems.

 

Fluid mechanics

 

Fluid mechanics is a science concerned with the response of fluids to forces exerted upon them. It is a branch of classical physics with applications of great importance in hydraulic and aeronautical engineering, chemical engineering, meteorology, and zoology.

The most familiar fluid is of course water, and an encyclopedia of the 19th century probably would have dealt with the subject under the separate headings of hydrostatics, the science of water at rest, and hydrodynamics, the science of water in motion. Archimedes founded hydrostatics in about 250 BC when, according to legend, he leapt out of his bath and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse crying “Eureka!”; it has undergone rather little development since. The foundations of hydrodynamics, on the other hand, were not laid until the 18th century when mathematicians such as Leonard Euler and Daniel Bernoulli began to explore the consequences, for a virtually continuous medium like water, of the dynamic principles that Newton had enunciated for systems composed of discrete particles. Their work was continued in the 19th century by several mathematicians and physicists of the first rank, notably G.G. Stokes and William Thomson. By the end of the century explanations had been found for a host of intriguing phenomena having to do with the flow of water through tubes and orifices, the waves that ships moving through water leave behind them, raindrops on windowpanes, and the like. There was still no proper understanding, however, of problems as fundamental as that of water flowing past a fixed obstacle and exerting a drag force upon it; the theory of potential flow, which worked so well in other contexts, yielded results that at relatively high flow rates were grossly at variance with experiment. This problem was not properly understood until 1904, when the German physicist Ludwig Prandtl introduced the concept of the boundary layer. Prandtl's career continued into the period in which the first manned aircraft were developed. Since that time, the flow of air has been of as much interest to physicists and engineers as the flow of water, and hydrodynamics has, as a consequence, become fluid dynamics. The term fluid mechanics embraces both fluid dynamics and the subject still generally referred to as hydrostatics.

One other representative of the 20th century who deserves mention here besides Prandtl is Geoffrey Taylor of England. Taylor remained a classical physicist while most of his contemporaries were turning their attention to the problems of atomic structure and quantum mechanics, and he made several unexpected and important discoveries in the field of fluid mechanics. The richness of fluid mechanics is due in large part to a term in the basic equation of the motion of fluids which is nonlinear - i.e., one that involves the fluid velocity twice over. It is characteristic of systems described by nonlinear equations that under certain conditions they become unstable and begin behaving in ways that seem at first sight to be totally chaotic. In the case of fluids, chaotic behaviour is very common and is called turbulence. Mathematicians have now begun to recognize patterns in chaos that can be analyzed fruitfully, and this development suggests that fluid mechanics will remain a field of active research well into the 21st century.

 

 

Development of rockets. (History of rocketry)

The technology of rocket propulsion appears to have its origins in the period AD 1200–1300 in Asia, where the first “propellant” had been in use for about 1,000 years for other purposes. The early uses were primarily military. Powered by black powder charges, rockets served primarily as bombardment weapons. Performance of these early rockets was poor by modern standards because the only available propellant was black powder, which is not ideal for propulsion. Military use of rockets declined from 1815 to 1936 because of the superior performance of guns.

During the period 1880–1930 the idea of using rockets for space travel grew in public interest. Stimulated by the conceptions of such fiction writers as Jules Verne, the Russian scientist Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky worked on theoretical problems of propulsion-system design and rocket motion and on the concept of multistage rockets. Robert H. Goddard, an American scientist and inventor also conducted a wide array of rocket experiments from 1908 to 1945. He independently developed ideas similar to those of Tsiolkovsky about spaceflight and propulsion and implemented them, building liquid- and solid-propellant rockets. His developmental work included tests of the world's first liquid-propellant rocket in 1926. A third pioneer, Hermann Oberth of Germany, developed much of the modern theory for rocket and spaceflight independent of Tsiolkovsky and Goddard. He not only provided inspiration for visionaries of spaceflight but played a pivotal role in advancing the practical application of rocket propulsion that led to the development of rockets in Germany during the 1930s.

Due to the work of these early pioneers and a host of rocket experimenters, the potential of rocket propulsion was vaguely perceived prior to World War II, but there were many technical barriers to overcome. Development was accelerated during the late 1930s and particularly during the war years. The most notable achievements in rocket propulsion of this era were the German liquid-propellant V-2 rocket and the Me-163 rocket-powered airplane. The main advances in propulsion that were involved in the wartime technology were the development of pumps, injectors, and cooling systems for liquid-propellant engines and high-energy solid propellants that could be formed into large pieces with reliable burning characteristics.

From 1945 to 1955 propulsion development was still largely determined by military applications. Liquid-propellant engines were refined for use in supersonic research aircraft, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and high-altitude research rockets.

Since 1965, missions have drawn on an ever-expanding technology base, using improved propellants, structural materials, and designs. Present-day missions may involve a combination of several kinds of engines and motors, each chosen according to its function.

 

 

Kinds of spacecraft

Spacecraft is a general term that includes sounding rockets, unmanned artificial satellites and space probes, space stations, and vehicles for carrying humans to and from space. With the exceptions of the sounding rocket and the space shuttle, spacecraft are considered separately from the rocket-powered vehicle that launches the spacecraft into orbit or boosts it away from Earth's vicinity (see launch vehicle).

A space probe is an unmanned spacecraft that is given a velocity great enough to allow it to escape Earth's gravitational attraction. Space probes may be classed as lunar, planetary, or deep-space. A deep-space probe is a probe sent beyond the Earth-Moon system; if sent to explore other planets, it is also called a planetary probe.

Other classifications of spacecraft are manned or unmanned, active or passive. A passive satellite transmits no radio signals. It may be tracked optically or with radar, and radio communications signals may be “bounced” off its surface. Active satellites send out radio signals to make tracking easier and to transmit data from their instruments to ground stations or other craft.

A space station is an artificial structure placed in orbit and equipped to support human habitation for extended periods.

Spacecraft differ greatly in size, shape, complexity, and purpose. Those that share similarities in design, function, or both are often grouped into program families—e.g., Soyuz, Venera, Salyut, and Gorizont in the U.S.S.R. (later Russia); Explorer, Apollo, Voyager, and Navstar in the United States; SPOT in France; and Meteosat developed by the European Space Agency. Lightness of weight and functional reliability are primary features of spacecraft design. Depending on their mission, spacecraft may spend minutes, days, months, or years in the environment of space. Mission functions must be performed while exposed to high vacuum, extreme variations in temperature, and strong radiation.

A general differentiation of spacecraft is by function—scientific or applications. A scientific satellite or probe carries instruments to obtain data on magnetic fields, space radiation, the Sun or other stars, planets and their moons, and other astronomical objects and phenomena. Applications spacecraft have utilitarian tasks; examples are Earth observation, military reconnaissance, telecommunications, and navigation and global positioning satellites.

Manned Flights

 

In the last years a new line has emerged in cosmonautics. This line is manned flights in long-life orbital scientific stations. The first vehicle of this kind was the Salyut orbital station. The flights of the Salyut orbital station lasted nearly six months and consisted of several stages. The first stage was marked by the joint flight of the station with the Soyuz-10 spaceship. The crew executed the rendezvous and docking of the Soyuz-10 spaceship to the Salyut station. They checked the functioning of the onboard systems ensuring the delivery of the expeditions aboard the station. After the station had been a month and a half in orbit the Soyuz-11 transport spaceship delivered another crew to the station, which fulfilled a vast research program. The cosmonauts conducted a number of investigations and experiments in the interests of the national economy, they executed observations and took photographs of geological and geographical objects of the Earth’s surface, of atmospheric formations, of the snow and ice cover of the planet.

During this flight the crew carried out a considerable program of medical and biological experiments, measurements and tests to determine the optimal conditions for the life and work of cosmonauts and to establish the possibilities for the fulfillment of different jobs in space. After three and a half month manned flight the Salyut station functioned automatically.

Manned flights of our crews in circumterrestrial space cover a wide range of problems and tasks associated with space research and exploration. Among these the main are:

- improvement of manned spacecraft, development of methods of navigation and control of spacecraft;

- investigation of the physical characteristics of near space, of phenomena and processes occurring in it;

- astrophysical research and observation of the Sun, Moon, stars and planets;

- observation and survey of geological and geographical objects on the Earth’s surface to utilize the data thus obtained for the benefit of the national economy;

- observation and photography of atmospheric formations, the snow and ice cover of the Earth to use the data obtained in short and long-term weather forecasting;

- medical and biological research to study the effect of space flight factors on the human organism.

These tasks were being accomplished both with the help of orbital manned and automatic stations of the Soyuz spaceships. The space crew conducted a thorough comprehensive check and trial of the improved ship’s systems.

On the whole it was a test flight which confirmed the reliability of improved design, on-board systems and units.

The next purpose of the next flight was to conduct astrophysical observations of stars in the ultraviolet band.

 

Space tourism

The passed XX century was marked by incredible achievements, which were not known in the history of the human civilization before. The flight of a human being into space is considered to be a culmination of scientific-technical revolution of the last century: that was the Soviet fighter pilot, the first cosmonaut of the planet Yuri Gagarin who encircled the Earth on April 12, 1961. From this moment on the active exploration of space has started - new spacecraft were designed, automatic vehicles were sent to the planets of the Solar system, space stations were launched into orbit, a human being went into outer space and visited the Moon. The development of space industry has drawn more and more people of different professions in it - i.e. scientists, engineers, designers, test pilots. But only a few out of the hundreds thousands specialists were given a unique chance to fly to space.

Nowadays the space technologies are gradually transferring from the sphere of experimental and
scientific research into the field of practical implementation. And now it's a high time for everyone not
only to take use of the satellite communication, but also to fly into the real space without being a
professional cosmonaut.

April 28, 2001 has become an official birthday of the space tourism - it was then that the "Soyuz TM-32" space vehicle having had aboard the first space tourist in the world was launched into space from
the Baikonur launch site at 11:37 Moscow time. The American millionaire Dennis Tito has spent 7 days
in orbit and dedicated his in-flight time to the Earth photographing from space. This mission
successfully ended on May 6, 2001 at 9:41 Moscow time, when the descent capsule softly landed in
the Kazakh steppes.

"Around 400 people have already been to space. It's a great privilege for me - to observe the Earth from space, encircling it every 90 minutes. My flight into space is not a walk, it is fulfillment of my life­long dream", - said Dennis Tito prior to take-off.

One year later, on April 25, 2002 the space tourist N2, resident of the South African Republic Mark Shuttleworth was launched into space. In contrast to Dennis Tito the second space tourist was allowed to freely move along the space station. In accordance with the agreement between ROSAVIAKOSMOS and NASA Mr. Shuttleworth was permitted to use onboard notebook computers for sending and receiving the e-mail. In addition, he was given a certain time for using the US communication system for down linking video and photo footage. When in space Mark Shuttleworth carried out his own scientific-research program, as well as participated in multiple press conferences (live broadcasting was transmitted in 30 countries of Africa).

After his 10-day space mission Mr. Shuttleworth has announced his firm desire to fulfill a new space mission "at any time". In order to commemorate this incredible event the second space tourist
purchased a mock-up of the "Soyuz TM-33" descent capsule, which had successfully delivered him
back to the Earth, as well as his space suit.

ATLAS aerospace company offers a real flight into space - the most unbelievable and challenging adventure. If you are able to afford this unusual space travel they will make your dream come true.