Tutorial:Salyut programme

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Welcome to my very first tutorial! Here, we will try to re-enact the world's first space stations. All of the designs are based on actual modules and rockets. Of course, I can't do it perfectly, but I am trying my best. Also, I am doing it without any mod parts.

The Salyut programme was the first space station program undertaken by the Soviet Union, which consisted of a series of four crewed scientific research space stations and two crewed military reconnaissance space stations over a period of 15 years from 1971 to 1986. It was, on the one hand, designed to carry out long-term research into the problems of living in space and a variety of astronomical, biological and Earth-resources experiments, and on the other hand this civilian program was used as a cover for the highly secretive military Almaz stations, which flew as well under the Salyut designation.

Right now I could only do Salyut 1, Salyut 4, Almaz, Progress unmanned vehicle and Soyuz personnel transport spacecrafts.


Launcher

Any launcher that can carry a large amount of payload into a low orbit can be used. But I recommend using the Proton-K from the ISS tutorial or any of the launchers from the spacecraft exchange in the KSP forum that could carry at least more than 10 tonnes (I don't know I haven't actually calculated the payloads' weight).


Soyuz and Progress

Soyuz is a series of spacecraft initially designed for the Soviet space programme by the Korolyov Space Bureau in the 1960s, and still in service today. The Soyuz succeeded the Voskhod spacecraft and was originally built as part of the Soviet manned lunar programme.

The Progress is a Russian expendable freighter spacecraft. The spacecraft is an unmanned resupply spacecraft during its flight but upon docking with a space station, it allows astronauts inside, hence it is classified manned by the manufacturer. It was derived from the Soyuz spacecraft, and is launched with the Soyuz rocket. It is currently used to supply the International Space Station, but was originally used to supply Soviet space stations for many years. There are three to four flights of the Progress spacecraft to the ISS per year. Each spacecraft remains docked until shortly before the new one, or a Soyuz (which uses the same docking ports) arrives. Then it is filled with waste, disconnected, deorbited, and destroyed in the atmosphere. Because of the different Progress variants used for ISS, NASA uses its own nomenclature where "ISS 1P" means the first Progress spacecraft to ISS.

Ship Design

Front to aft:

Launch

Try your best to put it on the same orbit as the orbiting Salyut station. If you have an auto-pilot, use the "Launch to rendezvous" function. If not, try to send it with the station.

Rendezvous

Check the tutorials on rendezvous and docking if you don't know how to. The goal is to attach the front end of the Soyuz or Progress to the front end of the station. You may need to switch between vessels to put them in the right directions.


Salyut 1

Salyut 1 (DOS-1) was the first space station of any kind, launched by the Soviet Union on April 19, 1971. More stations followed in the Salyut programme, and heritage of that space station program is still in use on the ISS.

Ship Design

Front to aft:


Almaz

The Almaz program was a highly secretive Soviet military space station program, began in the early 1960s.

Three crewed military reconnaissance stations were launched between 1971 and 1974: Salyut 2, Salyut 3 and Salyut 5. To cover the military nature of the program the three launched Almaz stations were designated as civilian Salyut space stations. Salyut 2 failed shortly after achieving orbit, but Salyut 3 and Salyut 5 both conducted successful manned testing. Following Salyut 5, the Soviet Ministry of Defence judged in 1978 that the time consumed by station maintenance outweighed the benefits relative to automatic reconnaissance satellites.

The space stations cores were known internally as OPS, from "Orbital Piloted Station." As part of the Almaz program several spacecraft for supportive roles were developed: The VA spacecraft, the Functional Cargo Block and the TKS spacecraft, which were to be used in several combinations. The heritage of the Almaz program continues to this day with the ISS module Zarya being one example.

Ship Design

Front to aft:


Salyut 4

Salyut 4 (DOS 4) was a Salyut space station launched on December 26, 1974 into an orbit with an apogee of 355 km, a perigee of 343 km and an orbital inclination of 51.6 degrees. It was essentially a copy of the DOS 3, and unlike its ill-fated sibling it was a complete success. Three crews attempted to make stays aboard Salyut 4 (Soyuz 17 and Soyuz 18 docked; Soyuz 18a suffered a launch abort). The second stay was for 63 days duration, and an unmanned Soyuz capsule remained docked to the station for three months, proving the system's long-term durability. Salyut 4 was deorbited February 2, 1977, and re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on February 3.


Ship Design

Front to aft.:


The Original Missions

The original Salyut space stations were in orbit in 1971-1986.The first space station was Salyut 1, which was launched by the Soviet Union on April 19, 1971. Like all the early space stations, it was "monolithic", intended to be constructed and launched in one piece, and then manned by a crew later. As such, monolithic stations generally contained all their supplies and experimental equipment when launched, and were considered "expended", and then abandoned, when these were used up.


The second generation of salyut stations were in orbit in 1986-present day. Plans for the stations called for the cores to allow, for the first time in spaceflight, the addition of several modules to a station core and to create a modular space station.For this, the DOS modules were to be equipped with a total of four docking ports: one docking port at the aft of the station as in the second generation Salyuts, and the replacement of the front docking port with a "docking sphere" containing a front, port and starboard docking port.While the station cores DOS-7 and DOS-8 were build and flown, they never received the Salyut designation; Instead, DOS-7 evolved into the Mir Core Module for the Mir space station that followed the Salyut programme, and DOS-8 was used as the Zvezda Service Module for the International Space Station (ISS) which followed Mir.


The modules was placed on a Low Earth Orbit, which usually corresponds to 160 to 2000 km. So, if you want to make it good, launch as usual, with a gravity turn starting at 10km. Continue until you reach a low apoapsis, then burn there to get a low periapsis a few kilometres from the height of your apoapsis and get an almost circular orbit. It is very possible to achieve this orbit with precise flying.


What now

You could do the International Space Station and/or possibly your own space station, interplanetary base, etc. let your imagination run wild!

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