Nuggets Volume 2

A second collection of smaller items

Dec 22, 2023

Venera probe on Venus. Alexei Leonov & Andrei Sokolov

Introduction:

One thing I want to try starting this issue is to have a document for download that will only be available for 1 week. (No extensions). The idea is to encourage people to subscribe, and read it. That’s at the end of this post.

The rest of the post is 3 items that are too short to merit a post on their own.

N1 with 6 grid fins

This one really came out of nowhere. A diagram showing a version of the N1 with 6 grid fins on stage 1, instead of 4. Here are the pictures, (No RGANTD reference available).

So, what’s going on? The diagrams are clearly low accuracy as the folded up fins show no perspective. The fuel line covers have changed in some cases to fit around new fins. I have no information on the new connector, I’d guess that it replaces something covered by a new fin position.

Why do it? For that we have an answer. This was a proposal for the N1-7L through to N1-12L. It was intended to compensate for a possible loss of stability caused by the removal of the skirt on the N1-7L onwards. We don’t know why it was not adopted, but I guess that tests showed it would not be needed.

For those who are not aware, grid fins are a more effective way of stabilising a rocket or missile at hypersonic velocities. This is explained on Wikipedia:

Grid Fins

Return of the N-11!

The N-11 was a proposal for a Proton class rocket based on the upper 2 stages of the N-1, blocks B and V. Korolev did not get the work approved - Boris Chertok considers this a serious mistake, as it would have provided flight testing of N1 hardware at a much earlier stage.

But it seems that the project was revived by Mishin in the 1970’s.

A few things to note:

The pointy fuel line covers show that this dates from the N1-7L or later
There’s not much space for a payload!
The upper stage is clearly the hydrogen fuelled Block-SR.

So, I cleaned up and enlarged that illustration, combining it with the (originally separate) Block-SR pictures, and came up with this:

N-11 1972 version, with Block SR upper stage.

I worked out the dimensions by subtracting the height of the N1 stages from the provided height of the N-11. Mark Wade has some more information at the Astronautix web site: http://www.astronautix.com/n/n11.html

Venera 8

Nothing that wild, but I have some nice new illustrations of Venera 8, with notes, that I have been cleaning up.

Translation of the science results:

“Data from scientific instruments showed that the temperature and pressure of the atmosphere at the surface at the Venera-8 landing site were, respectively, 470 ± 8 ° C and 90 ± 1.5 atmospheres, and the surface illumination at a solar angle of 5.5 ° was 350 ±150 lux. During descent at altitudes of about 46 and 33 km, a volumetric ammonia content of 0.01–0.1% was recorded in the atmosphere; at altitudes of 50 and 0–11 km, wind speeds were, respectively, 50–60 and 0–2 m/s. It was concluded that the surface layer of the planet in the area where the apparatus landed was quite loose with a soil density of 1.4 g/cm3, and the soil itself resembled terrestrial granite rocks.”

Venera 4

And on the subject of Venera, here’s my translation of a cross section of Venera 4:

This edition’s Cool Link:

Nice blog post on the first squad of cosmonauts. The original is in Russian but I have built computer translation into the link.

The 1st Cosmonaut Squad.

This editions Cool Image:

This is taken from the Voskhod 2 mission log, in which Alexei Leonov got 2 space firsts. The first walk in space, and the first art created in space. This is a scan of his art, with notes. Particularly interesting is the use of a solar spectrum as reference.

This editions “Grab it Now!” download:

A new feature, a link to download a Soviet Space Document, which will only be available for 7 days. For the first item, it’s the complete Voskhod 2 logbook, from which the cool image is taken. a 23 Mb PDF document.

Download here!

Subscribe on the link below to avoid missing out!