[HN Gopher] Old Soviet Venus descent craft nearing Earth reentry
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Old Soviet Venus descent craft nearing Earth reentry
Author : Wingman4l7
Score : 211 points
Date : 2025-05-02 19:02 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.leonarddavid.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.leonarddavid.com)
| quercusa wrote:
| Those of a certain age will remember this as the premise of the
| Six Million Dollar Man episode _Death Probe_ (S4E13).
| donnachangstein wrote:
| They would also remember there is a man with a cape in a phone
| booth that could be called upon to stop this thing.
| greggsy wrote:
| No, the Six Million Dollar Man stopped it
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| That's a super idea, but sadly Underdog is fictional.
| gcanyon wrote:
| "There's no need to fear! ..."
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Raise your hand if you remember phone booths.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Can't. My back hurts.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| I was in one a few weeks ago.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| It's been so long since those could reliably be found, that
| even the 1978 Superman movie has a gag about it (Clark
| steps up to one of those stand-style payphones, briefly
| looks befuddled, then runs into door turnstile instead,
| super-speed changing while it spins)
| RetroTechie wrote:
| Bonus points if you've used those equipped with a rotary
| dial.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| It would be pretty stereotypically Soviet to create a parachute
| system that only mostly (some of the Venera probes kinda crashed)
| works in the intended use case (short 1-way trip to Venus) but
| also somehow manages to work once way, way, way outside of its
| intended operating environment (50yr orbiting earth).
| 0x000xca0xfe wrote:
| To be fair Venus' atmosphere is pretty much hell.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Higher up the Venusian atmosphere is surprisingly earth-like.
| Interestingly though, once a probe gets deep enough into the
| atmosphere a parachute becomes unnecessary because the
| atmosphere has gotten so thick that a probe can simply soft-
| land.
| varjag wrote:
| Parachute deployment was possibly gasodynamic rather than
| electronically controlled. In which case there's a broad
| similarity on reentry in Earth atmosphere which could trigger
| the release.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Sounds unlikely, but it could have malfunctioned. I believe
| the deceleration chute was designed to deploy after the hot
| entry phase and be triggered mechanically once crossing the
| certain deceleration threshold of about 2g (I could be wrong
| though, take it with a huge grain of salt). It also worked as
| a pilot chute for the cap protecting the main one.
| mrtksn wrote:
| In my experience, in soviet engineering they don't augment
| stuff unless absolutely necessary. As a result, stuff tend to
| work as long as the physics work. It results in relatively
| crude but simple and reliable machines. The elegance comes from
| simplicity, in western tech the elegance comes from being well
| thought and designed for specific use cases. I.e. a Lada will
| be uncomfortable, loud, uneconomical car but at the same time
| it will withstand abuse and be easy to repair enough to get it
| going.
|
| Thinking about the elevator in our commie block, it would have
| given a heart attack to a western European. Instead of having
| double doors to keep us safe from the moving wall, it had pads
| on the bottom and top edge so if your hand or leg is stuck, the
| pad will be pushed and the elevator will stop immediately. Also
| there was a tiny cabinet door on the right side so you can
| access the mechanism to force open the door or force move/halt
| the elevator. As kids, we would be experimenting with those
| mechanisms. They worked every single time, no legs or arms were
| lost.
| throwewey wrote:
| A Lada is actually an Italian car built under license.
|
| Neah, paternoster is quite a common elevator design in the
| west: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternoster_lift
| mrtksn wrote:
| Depends on the model. It's Lada Niva that is legendary.
| throwewey wrote:
| How could I forget! Many apologies.
| fipar wrote:
| I often see one parked in my area (in Uruguay) with a
| sticker that says "Land Rover recovery vehicle"
| 725686 wrote:
| "The name paternoster ("Our Father", the first two words of
| the Lord's Prayer in Latin) was originally applied to the
| device because the elevator is in the form of a loop and is
| thus similar to rosary beads used as an aid in reciting
| prayers."
|
| I would have thought the name was related to the users
| praying before entering to increase their chances of
| surviving the ordeal.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Although this mechanism _looks_ scary it 's actually
| fine.
|
| The reason even its proponents accept you wouldn't build
| these now is that they have terrible accessibility, so
| they're only practical as an extra option.
| em-bee wrote:
| despite that, it looks like the reason no new
| paternosters are built and existing ones are removed is
| safety. unfortunately this is considered to be more
| important than cultural heritage protection.
|
| i have used one at the university of vienna. sadly it was
| removed almost 20 years ago.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Calling paternosters 'common' in the West is quite a
| stretch. They are a curiosity where they are found
| precisely because there are so few.
| zabzonk wrote:
| Only place I've ever come across one was Napier College,
| Edinburgh in the mid 1970s. I found it quite scary, and
| actually preferred to take the stairs. I seem to remember
| it was actually shut down, for undisclosed reasons.
| ggm wrote:
| I also used these ones in Edinburgh decades ago, and the
| same model at Leeds uni which was a similar vintage. The
| Napier one there is a story about a lecturer convincing
| two students it went upside down and if you tried to loop
| the loop you had to stand on your hands to do the
| transition... much hilarity when they appear upside down
| on the other side.
| jtwaleson wrote:
| For some reason I looked into this a couple of weeks ago,
| and discovered there's one in Amsterdam pretty close to
| where I often work, in the Grand Hotel Amrath. It's
| supposedly open to the public every Sunday between 10am
| and 2pm. I think it's only the second time I've seen one
| in person, and the previous one has been demolished.
| banku_brougham wrote:
| Have a look up on the Russian town called Togliati
| em-bee wrote:
| when i first heard about this probe last week i was wondering,
| isn't this thing old and unique enough to warrant a mission to
| rescue and preserve it? combined with todays lower prices for a
| space flight, it might just be worth it.
|
| and now it looks like it might just survive anyways. but then
| according to the article there also seems to be a second
| (identical?) model. so maybe it's not that important, except for
| maybe material analysis what does 50 years of exposure to space
| do to the material.
| rdtsc wrote:
| In principle this is not science fiction, Space Shuttle
| captured a satellite, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-49,
| they just didn't return it back. It was a catch, fix, and
| release.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| They did that when they fixed the Hubble telescope too. Five
| times.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Servi.
| ..
| euroderf wrote:
| How many satellites have the USAF and US Space Command
| captured ? Inquring minds want to know.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| They do run their own unmanned shuttle based platform
| spacecraft but full capabilities aren't public.
| walrus01 wrote:
| The space shuttle also captured and returned the long
| duration exposure facility satellite, a materials test bus
| for future missions. Extremely uneconomical, however.
| mk_stjames wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-51-A brought two satellites
| back in the cargo bay that had not reached their proper orbit
| on a prior launch.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-32 brought back the Long
| Duration Exposure Facility experiment, a bigass science probe
| the size of a small school bus.
|
| There are still missions that are classified that could have
| done so as well.
|
| It was something the shuttle was designed to do, with the
| 60-foot cargo bay requirement and the ability to bring back
| the mass it flew with coming specifically from the military.
| MetallicDragon wrote:
| I don't think we have any active craft capable of recovering
| it. The space shuttle probably could have done it, but with a
| cost of about $1.5b per launch, there is no way that would be
| worth it.
|
| SpaceX's Dragon 2 easily has enough cargo capacity to bring it
| down (~3 tons vs 0.5 ton), but there's still the question of
| intercepting, capturing, and securing it in Dragon's cargo bay.
| That would still cost something north of $100m to recover the
| lander.
| dmurray wrote:
| Most of the benefit of the Shuttle program, and manned
| spaceflight in general, has come from R and D on the launch
| process, or from the prestige and bragging rights of being
| able to launch humans into space. So once they're up there,
| you're getting your money's worth (or not) no matter what
| they do, you may as well do something cool like recover a
| historic satellite.
| olex wrote:
| Dragon likely wouldn't be able to get it, unfortunately.
|
| The lander would easily fit into the unpressurized cargo bay
| (the "trunk"), that is typically used to launch various
| vacuum-bound payloads alongside pressurized cargo inside the
| capsule. However, for a return from orbit, the trunk cannot
| be used - it is not protected by a heat shield, and is
| ejected before re-entry.
|
| You are correct that the return payload mass of a Dragon
| would technically allow it. But you'd need to somehow get the
| captured object _inside_ the capsule, which may be possible
| via the EVA front hatch for something smaller, but not 1m in
| diameter like the Venera lander.
|
| Starship should be able to do it, since it is fully protected
| by heat shielding and returns in one piece, not ejecting any
| modules in orbit. But that's quite a while from being
| operational yet.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| I would guess that the most expensive part of such an endeavor
| wouldn't be the launch; it would be developing and building a
| spacecraft capable of capturing it and bringing it back.
|
| Even the Space Shuttle wasn't necessarily a perfect fit for the
| job as-is. Hubble was serviced many times, but it was
| specifically designed for on-orbit capture and servicing by the
| Shuttle. Before they decommissioned the shuttle they actually
| had to install an extra piece of hardware to make it feasible
| to capture and de-orbit using future non-crewed spacecraft. And
| even then that's just to make sure it crashes in a safe place,
| not to bring it home intact.
|
| There was also a mission to service a satellite that wasn't
| designed for the purpose, and they had a really hard time
| capturing it and very nearly had to give up after days' worth
| of failed attempts. It finally took simultaneous EVA by three
| astronauts to coordinate a successful capture (one to grab it
| by hand, two to get it onto a specialized adapter rig built
| just for that satellite so that the Canadarm could hold it),
| which is quite a thing considering that the Shuttle's only
| designed to allow two people on EVA at a time.
|
| This craft is likely tumbling, which I presume would make it
| unacceptably dangerous for a crewed mission (and certainly
| rules out anyone just going out there and grabbing it with
| their hands), in addition to making successful capture that
| much more difficult.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| Man, I wish we had the technology to just concoct a spacecraft
| that can intercept the lander in its shallow reentry and bring it
| back in as few pieces as possible.
|
| I don't know what value can it have to be studied since it never
| left low earth orbit (albeit it was there since 1972), but I know
| it would be a cool addition to any museum that may host it.
| fsckboy wrote:
| space shuttle, the air force still has one, doesn't it? also,
| elon could whip something up.
| pacificmint wrote:
| The Air Force never had a space shuttle, though NASA flew
| missions for the Air Force and the NRO.
|
| But at this point none of the remaining shuttles are in an
| operational state.
|
| Maybe you are thinking of the X-37 which is operated by the
| space force?
| porphyra wrote:
| It's funny/sad how a bunch of Soviet Venera probes had
| malfunctioning camera lens caps and returned black photos. From
| Venera 9-12 all four probes had malfunctioning lens caps. And
| then
|
| > The Venera 14 craft had the misfortune of ejecting the camera
| lens cap directly under the surface compressibility tester arm,
| and returned information for the compressibility of the lens cap
| rather than the surface.
| FredPret wrote:
| It's funny _now_ - imagine being the Commissar for Lens Cap
| design in the old USSR and overseeing all that
| staplung wrote:
| Oh that Commissar was fine. It was the Commissar for Lens Cap
| Ejection Systems on Interplanetary Probes that got thrown
| under the avtobus.
| marcodiego wrote:
| If it falls in my backyard. Can I keep it to myself?
| eagerpace wrote:
| No
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| From a previous probe:
|
| > Space law required that the space junk be returned to its
| national owner, but the Soviets denied knowledge or ownership
| of the satellite.[8] Ownership therefore fell to the farmer
| upon whose property the satellite fell. The pieces were
| thoroughly analyzed by New Zealand scientists which determined
| that they were Soviet in origin because of manufacturing marks
| and the high-tech welding of the titanium. The scientists
| concluded that they were probably gas pressure vessels of a
| kind used in the launching rocket for a satellite or space
| vehicle and had decayed in the atmosphere.[9]
|
| I wonder how space law works when the national owner (CCCP) no
| longer exists? Does it go to Russia? Kazakhstan?
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| Russia is the successor state to the USSR
| treyd wrote:
| Usually international law regarding successor states applies,
| so it would almost certainly be Russia that would have a
| claim to it.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| If it lands in my backyard, I'm only giving it directly to
| Vlad Putin in person. He has to come here.
| copula4 wrote:
| His name is not Vlad, it's a familiar form of a completely
| unrelated name. If you want to demonstrate contempt by
| using a familiar form, use Vova.
|
| It sounds about the same as if I used something like "Joe"
| to refer to a William.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Everyone knows who is meant by "Vlad Putin".
|
| The purpose of calling Vlad Putin "Vlad Putin" is to show
| disrespect towards Vlad Putin, which is better
| accomplished by making the diminutization less
| linguistically accurate.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| What are the chances it lands and kills a whale?
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Whales are not _typically_ found on land, and usually when they
| 're already dead.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| You've clearly never been to a Walmart outside Indianapolis
| before.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| What if it lands on water though?
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| I think we can still estimate that probability. I'd say 0%.
| aruggirello wrote:
| This thread is looking more and more as if it were written
| by Douglas Adams.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| It sounds like it will definitely land, no parachute, because it
| was made to be strong enough to survive the pressures of Venus. I
| hope it doesn't land near me.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Sorry, but there is still no chance it will land. It's safe to
| bet your house on it making a nice crater or just disappearing
| from radar into the drink.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Would be awesome if it soft-landed on a field and started taking
| and transmitting pictures of sheep.
| eh_why_not wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_482
|
| _> Its landing module, which weighs 495 kilograms (1,091 lb), is
| highly likely to reach the surface of Earth in one piece as it
| was designed to withstand 300 G 's of acceleration and 100
| atmospheres of pressure._
|
| Awesome! I don't know how you can design for 300 G's of
| acceleration!
| dgrin91 wrote:
| Nitpicking, but wouldn't it be 300 Gs of deceleration? I know
| the math is basically the same, but technically the words a
| mean different things
| jbnorth wrote:
| What is deceleration but acceleration in the opposite
| direction? /s
| JohnKemeny wrote:
| There's no need for the "/s" on the end, there.
| Deceleration, and especially in this case with a natural
| frame of reference, deceleration is negative acceleration.
| crazydoggers wrote:
| Acceleration is a vector. So if you apply the "deceleration"
| long enough you'll eventually be accelerating in the opposite
| direction. Without a frame of reference it's all the same.
| Even with a frame of reference you're still accelerating just
| that it's in he opposite direction of the current velocity.
| Eduard wrote:
| I fly through trams in completely different directions
| depending on whether it accelerates or decelerates. So for
| sure a system's design must consider more than just the
| magnitude of acceleration.
| amoshebb wrote:
| I think this is a case where "technically" the words mean the
| same thing but "generally" they mean different things.
| os2warpman wrote:
| There are electronics and gyroscopes designed for >9,000 G
| loads, in guided artillery shells.
|
| Aerospace is awesome.
| ConanRus wrote:
| Soviet is the best (c)
| CommenterPerson wrote:
| If the parachute had already deployed sometime during the past 50
| years, wouldn't it burn up on re-entry?
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