The space shuttle "Blizzard" of the former Soviet Union did not carry people on its first flight, nor did it carry people in the end.
The former Soviet Union developed only one space shuttle "Blizzard",
It only made an orbital flight at1988165438+1October 15, and it was still unmanned. Not only did there not be a direct manned first flight, but also a lot of preparations were made for the unmanned first flight: in order to study the problem of heat protection when returning from orbit, engineers also developed the "Bravo -4" unmanned tester, and completed four orbital flights with the code name of "Cosmos" series, with the time of1June 4, 1982 and1March 1983 respectively. Before the blizzard really went to the sky, the Soviet Union conducted more than 40 flight tests, including nearly 70 automatic landing tests.
The maiden voyage of the space shuttle Blizzard was very successful, and it returned to the scheduled landing runway accurately. The first manned flight would have been carried out soon (originally planned as 1994- 1995), but with the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1990, the Soviet space shuttle blizzard project was officially dismounted in 199 1. In 2002, the space shuttle Blizzard, together with the energy rocket,
At this point, the snowstorm plan completely ended in a bleak way.
The American space shuttle did not directly carry out the first manned flight.
In 198 1, the United States launched the space shuttle Columbia, achieving the first manned flight, and John Watts Young became the first commander of the space shuttle.
He was the commander of Apollo 13 manned spacecraft landing on the moon. Although Apollo 13 failed to land on the moon, it returned to Earth safely due to the excellent control of astronauts. But the space shuttle Columbia is not the first space shuttle in the United States. Before that, there was a space shuttle enterprise, which was a pure test platform. Even before the official manned launch of the space shuttle Columbia, flight tests had been carried out repeatedly, and the space shuttle was carried into the atmosphere by Boeing aircraft many times.
The reusability of the space shuttle, as well as the high construction cost and launch cost, determines that it cannot be launched and tested many times like a manned spacecraft.
Different from manned spacecraft, the space shuttle does not need many unmanned flight tests before its first manned flight, but needs to launch many unmanned spacecraft (the former Soviet Union launched five unmanned test spacecraft before launching the world's first manned spacecraft carrying Gagarin into space; In the last century, the United States developed three manned spacecraft series, namely Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. Before the first manned flight, the three series launched 10 unmanned test spacecraft, which is related to their different design characteristics and their own value, because each space shuttle was designed to be reused 100 times and only tested.
In addition, the value of the space shuttle itself and the maintenance cost after each space launch and return are too expensive.
So most of the tests are done on the ground and in the atmosphere, so as to be foolproof.
The manned technical support of the space shuttle is based on the mature manned spacecraft.
Another reason why the number of test launches of the space shuttle before manned is obviously less than that of the spacecraft is that the space shuttle was developed on the basis of manned spacecraft, ensuring human safety.
Why people can sit on the bench. .
To say why the space shuttle can carry out the first manned flight, this is the embodiment of the design function! Like sitting on a bench. The function of what you design can correspond to the ability of events.
The space shuttle is different from a spaceship (rocket). The space shuttle is a bit like a large transport plane. It can send a spaceship into space and back. It is normal to carry people.