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Comment by numpad0 | Hacker News Reader

There is sense of mystique associated with the Soviet Union but the best they managed to build were AKs, Soyuz, Chernobyl, all interesting and robust in its own ways but not all that competitive in terms of performance, so,

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Soyuz is still, to this day in 2021, the cheapest and most reliable way to get people in LEO. By any performance metric it was and still is the best tool for the job.

Same for the AK, it was reliable and accurate at a fraction of the cost which is why it is so popular still today.

There is a lot more to engineering than top performance. Reliability and cost is just as important. When you factor that in, it's clear that Soviet engineering was excellent, and frankly could hardly have been better. Production though? Yes, not that great. But the engineers were able to meet their goals brilliantly.

Price per seat to NASA on Soyuz was $90m each, while per seat on Falcon 9 it works out at about $55m under the current contract. Bear in mind that contract was signed before SpaceX had recovered any first stage boosters, so that's not taken into account in the pricing yet. Soyuz certainly had a good run though.

This was just Roscomos nickel and diming NASA. The actual cost per seat to Roscomos from the factory is around 19-22 million.

Ok, I suppose on those terms we'd need to know the real cost to SpaceX after they have recovered the first stages and used them for a dozen satellite launches each. The fact is on commercial terms SpaceX has been undercutting the Russians for years now, and were doing so even before first stage and fairing recovery.

Edit: It looks like NASA has already agreed to allow SpaceX to re-use first stages and Crew Dragon capsules for crew flights as well, starting this year.

We really don't. Roscomos doesn't make the rockets, it's the Russian NASA. The cost here is because of the middle man and the US having been dependent.

Be that as it may, today in 2021, the cheapest and most reliable way we have to send someone to LEO is to make a Soyuz and use that to send them.

Maybe eventually SpaceX will catch up in cost. But in 2021 it hasn't yet.

So you're arguing it's cheaper in the case where nobody openly knows Roscosmo's numbers, nobody can obtain the services at those numbers, then comparing the cost at the FACTORY for Soyuz to the price of LAUNCH for SpaceX - before accounting for using the same rocket TEN TIMES - and still claiming Soyuz is cheaper?

Edit: Parent filled in data below, it looks like Soyuz in cheaper. :)

We actually can optain the numbers. Roscomos is a public agency. They buy the rockets from the Progress join venture, and a public the exact cost of both the rocket and the launch. The cost of only the rocket is around 5 million dollars.

The total cost in 2018 for a Soyuz launch to Roscosmos is 3.5 to 4 billion 2018 rubles, which is around 20-23 million dollars per seat.

The cost is kind of at the factory because Roscomos partially builds some systems of Soyuz. But in the end it costs Roscosmos 20 million to put someone into space using a Soyuz, and it costs NASA 55 million to do it via SpaceX.

I'm comparing the cost of launching an astronaut to the ISS. For Soyuz, since the rocket is not reusable, this is the cost of the rocket plus capsule plus payload plus préparation, tracking, etc.. For SpaceX, it is just the cost of their launch. Soyuz is simply so well engineered that it still is cheaper, even though the SpaceX rocket is reusable.

> even though the SpaceX rocket is reusable.

As I pointed out already, the original NASA contract was signed long before SpaceX recovered a single core. Tose prices don't take into account reusability at all. SpaceX already has two pre-flown crew rated first stages ready to fly again. NASA has recently approved using them, and refurbished capsules, for upcoming missions. The cost calculation today is nothing like 2014 when SpaceX signed Commercial Crew.

I doubt making a Soyuz and throwing it away is cheaper than building an F9 and reusing the first stage and booster 10 times. At that point the second stage would have to cost almost as much as an entire Soyuz stack.

Making a Soyuz is really, really cheap. Something around 5 million dollars for the rocket. Most of the cost in a Soyuz launch isn't from building the rocket.

If it is the case then we will see SpaceX charging NASA less than a Soyuz launch amortized over the number of passengers per launch. But in 2021 it still isn't the case.

I understand the sentiment you are trying to express and to some degree I agree but I would argue that the AK is a really bad example that actually is probably the greatest example of the Soviet simple utilitarian technology. Out of all of the battle rifles designed (The big three being the AR, AK and FAL/SCAR) the AK has gone under the least amount of revisions, the biggest revision being the AK-74 where the Soviets decided to go to a smaller caliber to compete with the introduction of the AR and more importantly, really the only revision functionally was the 74 went to a short stroke vs the 47's long stroke. The AK platform has not only survive the test of time, but is probably the most reliable battle rifle built, it is a testament to the genius of Kalashnikov that the AK produced today is functionally the same design as built in 1947. It is also very emblematic of the Soviet thought process in design.

> of all of the battle rifles designed (The big three being the AR, AK and FAL/SCAR)

To be pedantic about terminology the Kalashnikov family of rifles are generally not Battle Rifles. Of your listed examples only the FN FAL and some models of the FN SCAR are considered Battle Rifles.

Battle Rifles as a term came out in the 80s to distinguish between autoloading rifles soldiers had fielded since WW2 that weren't assault rifles. Assault rifles are defined as a selective fire rifle using an intermediate cartridge with a detachable magazine.

An intermediate cartridge being one that is more powerful than a pistol but less so than a traditional rifle cartridge. Germany pioneered, or at least mass-adopted, this concept with the 7.92 Kurz [short] round in WW2. The USSR ran with this concept - through seeing the STG-44 (German 7.92 kurz assault rifle), capturing some German weapon designers and following the train of thought of the period. This ended up with the AK-47, then later variants on this pattern.

NATO countries generally also wanted to do this, see the .280 British - the original cartridge of the FAL (and the EM-2). With one big exception - the US Army Ordnance Corps pushed for adoption of a traditional cartridge, and NATO bowed (in part as the US agreed to adopt the FAL) and everyone ended up with the full powered 7.62 NATO round.

Despite pushing for it, the US soon found out that having a high powered cartridge (and the sort of weapon that goes with it) wasn't what they actually needed, and they chose the 5.56 NATO round as used in the original M16 rifle (AR-15 platform). The rest of NATO caught up soon enough, often with platforms based of the AR-18/AR-180. This left them in the 80's with a new type of rifle that we would call an Assault Rifle but they also needed to refer to the (more) modern rifles they'd been fielding since the 2nd World War.

This resulted in the term Battle Rifle being created to refer to a self-loading rifle using a full power cartridge with a slew of (optional) features like full auto (the SLR [UK's inch pattern FAL] was semi-auto only), pistol grips (the M14 had a traditional stock) and the like. The 7.62 NATO calibre versions of the FN SCAR are generally considered Battle Rifles, whereas the 5.56 NATO versions aren't.

I tend to use the term battle rifle as representing rifles utilized by world militaries, I fully yield that you are correct, but I tend to try to stay away from the word assault rifle when trying to convey what I am saying due to it being an extremely loaded word now. Because the conversation can devolve into weather the AR-15, civilian AK etc. are classified in that group, by utilizing the term battle while not technically correct, infers meaning to the reader that I am specifically talking about rifles utilized by the military. That being said, I acknowledge that there is a stricter classification for the two groups and that my utilization of the term is not technically correct.

What is, or is not, an Assault Rifle is clearly defined, whereas a lot of the confusion comes from the use of the similar term Assault Weapon which is less well defined/defined by cosmetic characteristics.

Perhaps using something like Military Rifle would allow you to refer to such without being technically wrong?

Good suggestion, I will utilize it in the future.

>all interesting and robust in its own ways but not all that competitive in terms of performance, so,

Really? The most performing rocket-engine for a long time was the Russian RD-170. The most impressive performing Fighter (aeronautic wise the Su-27) The fastest Sub also Russian, the biggest ICBM (R-36M) too and so on.

>best they managed to build were AKs, Soyuz, Chernobyl

The US did Agent Orange, Fat Man and Apollo 1, was that the best the US manged to build?

Most Soviet computers were shoddy copies of Western models. DEC even left Easter eggs in Cyrillic on their silicon to Russian reverse-engineers:

https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html

But Computers are not everything. The US did some good tec but the SU too, it's not just black and white.

SU indeed had bright minds who had clever ideas, but its economy favored copying over own innovation. So outside of military field SU didn't have much to boast. "Made in USSR" was used mostly in sarcastic phrases by its own population.

>So outside of military field SU didn't have much to boast.

Well that was more or less the only field where money and researchers where available in huge quantities.

That's kind of a interesting article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_innovation

The Soviets almost built their own internet before the U.S. It was ironically killed by the bureaucrats that it would have largely made redundant.

https://strelkamag.com/en/article/what-happened-to-the-sovie...

That's not true on any reasonable scale. One just can't claim 'almost built X' for every failed attempt to secure financial support for a research institute to work in more, or less X direction.

The Soviets didn't actually round their scientists up and force them to work. That's basically just US propaganda version of Soviet system.

Not to say that never happened, but its incredibly reductionist and inaccurate.

The chief designer of the Soviet space program, Sergei Korolev, was imprisoned on false charges and sentenced to slave labor. This sentence was later reduced to 'merely' eight years in a sharashka, a labor camp for scientists. That's the way to do it: first, show the victim how bad it really can be, then reduce the sentence and the severity, but only on cooperation and good behavior. "Produce or you go back to the mines to die horribly". In a totalitarian regime the stick goes a long way.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev

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