First Images of Russian-European Manned Spacecraft

oliderid writes "The first official image of a Russian-European manned spacecraft has been unveiled. It is designed to replace the Soyuz vehicle currently in use by Russia and will allow Europe to participate directly in crew transportation.The reusable ship was conceived to carry four people towards the Moon, rivaling the US Ares/Orion system. This project is the Plan A for the European Space agency. The plan B is an evolution of the ATV proposed by a consortium of European companies led by Astrium."

Go Europe!

They can go visit the Moon, but the US has already claimed it with the cunning use of flags.

Re:Go Europe!

They can go visit the Moon, but the US has already claimed it with the cunning use of flags.

Yeah they claimed it, but we're going to take it! Muhahaha!!!!! :-P

Re:Go Europe!

If we go there, who is going to stop us from removing the flags and claiming they never were there. All the conspiracy theorists would blieve us anyway. And the US doesnt have anything at the moment that can go to the moon :)

Re:Go Europe!

People voting against Bush and Obama

Oh, I hadn't realized Obama had chosen his running mate...

Re:

[not serious] No they didn't really place flags there, because it was fake! Here's the proof [stuffucanuse.com] [/not serious]

Rover?

Is there any way we can look through a telescope from Earth and see the flag on the moon?

Well, our esteemed Houston (Democrat) Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee suggested that the Mars Pathfinder could do that for us [nationalreview.com].

But I guess then they'd claim Pathfinder [nasa.gov] was fake.

Re:Go Europe!

You could never, ever see the Apollo flags on the moon through a telescope. Partly it's because they are very, very small. But, mostly it's because they were not left behind. What is left behind on the moon are the LEM descent modules, plus miscellaneous equipment like those rover buggies from the later missions. Those are still too small to be seen from a telescope. However, once the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launches later this year, it's LROC camera (a close cousin of the HIRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) should be able to see evidence of the Apollo missions.

Re:Go Europe!

The Apollo astronauts left retroreflectors [ucsd.edu] on the moon. These are devices that reflect a laser beam back in the direction it came from. If you were to shine a laser beam at the moon, you would see its reflection (given a powerful enough laser).

the hell?

Looks like a goddamn iCapsule. Damn you, Jobs!

Anyone else getting depressed with the space race? We've been at it for decades and the latest and greatest the Ruskies and Americans come up with looks like pretty much the same shit we've been doing for years, or in America's case, a 30 year wasted effort and then we come back to capsules. Repackaging the same old shit, up the price and call it a new version for the future, where have I seen this before? Oh, right, Microsoft. Apollo would be something along the lines of Win9x, better than what came before but not great. The shuttle would be like WinMil, we skipped XP and went straight to Vista with this Constellation debacle, and once that fails the next next shuttle successor will be something like Windows 7, a looming future failure.

*sigh*

Re:the hell?

The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.

There's just no way to cheaply lift payload to orbit using our current rockets. That's why there's no revolutions in spacecraft-building.

We need something like space-plane, launch loops or space elevator for new space revolution.

Re:the hell?

The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.

I thought they pushed -- opposite and equal reaction and all that

Re:the hell?

The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.

I thought they pushed -- opposite and equal reaction and all that

They blow.

Reminds me of the woman at HP Germany where I gave a training many years ago. When we talked about a cooling fan, she asked: "Does it suck or blow?" Yes I was able to control my face, but it was hard.

Re:the hell?

The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.

There's just no way to cheaply lift payload to orbit using our current rockets. That's why there's no revolutions in spacecraft-building.

We need something like space-plane, launch loops or space elevator for new space revolution.

Indeed. I always thought space elevators seemed so fantastic as to be beyond belief but damned if that might become practical before the seemingly less-challenging Buck Rogers rockets.

I always liked the idea for the old Orion drive ships. "We're not going to be building these things like dainty tinfoil creations, they'll be welded together in drydocks like navy destroyers and weigh about as much. Float 'em out to see, light off the a-bombs, they can handle the weight." Now I don't think even Dick Cheney could go along with the idea of a bomb-powered ship but I wonder if anti-matter would be a suitable replacement charge? Aside from the issue of not being able to manufacture it in any sort of significant quantity, I'm wondering how bad the gamma flashes would be. Would it be safe if we towed launch vehicles out in the middle of the ocean? How much ocean water would it take to block the rays? Would there be any ionizing radiation to produce fallout?

I've heard some other crazy ideas for non-chemical rockets. One design has pellets of deuterium dropped into a chamber where they are precisely hit by multiple lasers and causes a tiny fusion explosion that is forced out the bottom of the ship, giving a far better bang for the buck than conventional propellants.

It just seems like we're rehashing the way things were done before instead of coming up with something new. Is it that the technology is so bleedin' difficult to invent, is it a lack of money and political will, or would the danger of the technology be so great that there's no way in hell anyone would sign off on it? I mean, we could have built Orion in the 50's, we could crash-build one of those things in the event of some planetary emergency (i.e. needing to get Bruce Willis up to an asteroid to blow up), but nothing short of that would convince people to use nukes for go-juice.

Re:the hell?

The blast is deceptive, it is generated by the released gamma radiation being absorbed by surrounding matter rather than by the contents of the bomb absorbing energy. On Earth nuclear explosions have a big blast because their is plenty of atmosphere to absorb the gamma, radiate less energetic photons, and expand, a nuclear burst in the water is much less effective blast-wise than an airburst and a in-ground blast is down-right disappointing. In space there is no practically atmosphere so there is little to expand due to the energy release except for the ablative coatings in the engines themselves. Eventually we'll be pushing asteroids around by detonating nuc's near them which will vaporize the surface facing the release and generating the expanding reaction mass.

Re:

Google the Orion project; space launches with nukes, payloads that could carry the entire ISS up in one go, along with a few spares, large enough to make inter-planetary colonization realistic, and it's not science fiction.

The problem is the fallout from the bombs of course. But if you take that radiation in perspective it does make you wonder if that would be a show-stopper for an important enough mission.

Re:the hell?

Obviously, you have never designed a rocket. Fortunately I have!

Here are the real equations:

delta-v = 9.8 * Isp * ln(launch_mass/orbit_mass)

delta-v to orbit is about 9000 m/s

Isp is an engine parameter. Simple Lox/Kerosene engines come in around 350s, complex lox/hydrogen engines come in around 450s. (Rocket engines do not run stochiometric, they run fuel rich - the reasons are complex, but essentially hydrogen is better at converting heat into thrust than water.)

OK, so let's do some numbers:

9000 = 9.8 * 350 * ln(launch_mass/orbit_mass)

ln(launch_mass/orbit_mass) = 2.62
launch_mass/orbit_mass = 14

So you need 14 pounds of propellant for every pound of orbited mass. of that 14 pounds of propellant, about 3/4 are LOX - which is essentially free (pennies per pound in large quantities). So really you are paying for 10 pounds of kerosene, about $5 or so.

Now, for real rockets it ends up closer to $20 per pound, because 1) rockets tend to use more expensive liquid hydrogen, and 2) rockets stage, which is slightly fuel inefficient.

But my original numbers are correct. Yours are wrong - or at least misrepresented. 5.5 kg of propellant, 3/4 of which is LOX would not get you to orbit, but would cost about $1.

Lunar?

The choice of words "towards the moon" is very well done. Article states this is capable of bring six people into Terran orbit, and four into Lunar orbit. I understand the difficulty in getting down to the moon and back up, but if you're capable of getting there and back with four people, odds are you can get down to the surface. Why not just go for broke? At the very least it'd be a huge PR coup.

Re:Lunar?

Article states this is capable of bring six people into Terran orbit, and four into Lunar orbit. I understand the difficulty in getting down to the moon and back up, but if you're capable of getting there and back with four people, odds are you can get down to the surface.

Not a bit of it. It's a question of fuel.

Having reached the Moon, you have to fire engines to slow down into orbit. Otherwise you loop around the back and head straight back to Earth like Apollo 13. So you need to carry fuel for this.

So now you're circling the Moon like Apollo 8. Good. To come home, you need to fire engines again to speed back up. More fuel.

But wait, you want to visit the surface? Then you need a lander. Those things are heavy. And it needs fuel: fuel to land, and fuel to take off again.

That's the trouble with spaceflight. It's all about fuel. Every manoeuvre burns fuel. Every kilogram of fuel means you need even more fuel at the start, just to carry that fuel into space with you. It's why the Saturn V rocket was the size of a skyscraper, but only carried something the size of a minibus to the moon, and brought only a tiny capsule home to Earth. All the rest? Fuel tanks.

Re:Lunar?

Except, the Saturn V only got them to the moon. Getting into orbit, landing, coming back up, and getting back to earth was the job of your minibus and tiny capsule.

Saturn V got Apollo to the Moon, with the fuel and equipment necessary to stop and land there and to come home again.

Let's see: the service module, the lunar excursion module, all the fuel for both of them... that's got to be three or four times the mass of the command module, which was all that got back to Earth (I haven't looked it up so this is probably well off). A rocket whose sole purpose was to send a crew around the Moon, but not to land, could have been a whole lot smaller than Saturn V.

Look at it this way: suppose that bringing along a lander and fuel supplies for a Moon landing doubles the mass of your spacecraft at the Moon. Then clearly, that must require that you at least double the size of the rocket on the pad.

I don't actually know what the plan would be for a Moon landing with this vehicle. The fact that it has its own thrusters for landing suggests to me that it might have a direct-ascent mission profile: no separate lander, just bring down the whole ship. NASA considered this approach when planning Apollo: it has the benefit of simplicity, but would have needed a more powerful rocket even than Saturn V to bring enough fuel. Perhaps with modern materials and engineering it could be done this way: but as the article says, no rocket powerful enough currently exists.

Re:Lunar?

And can't do now.

Its going to land how?

I'm not sure I'd be too happy if I was being put in that, the booster landing thing sounds like its asking for trouble if you get low on fuel, or they get knocked out of alignment or a floating point error messes up their servo controllers....

At least with a parachute or wings you know that so long as they are they they will work. Also I imagine that it will require a huge amount of fuel to turn it around and then slow it.

Or have I got the wrong idea and they're going to parachute in and then just use these at the end at which point again you have to ask - why bother?

Re:Its going to land how?

I'd guess the thrusters are used only during final touchdown to soften the landing...JUST LIKE SOYUZ DOES (and if they fail, the touchdown will simply be a little rough...JUST LIKE IN SOYUZ)

Re: The Summary

The reusable ship was conceived to carry four people towards the Moon

Apparently the ESA / Russia are ushering in a new age of "close enough" space exploration.

News Report, 2021:Today astronauts from the ESA will begin a new chapter of space exploration by first going up really high, and then kinda drifting off in sort of a that way direction. The mission captain was interviewed recently concerning the importance of today's historic flight.

"We are confident that the up portion of the mission will go smoothly. We then plan to transfer to the next stage where, God willing, we will be the among the first humans to end up somewhere over toward the Moon." He commented, waving vaguely off toward the sky.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

You might as well ask what the point of new music is? We've already got tons of it, more than enough to go around for a lifetime, so why don't we just close up shop, and put all that money, which happens to be more than is invested in manned space exploration, into poverty relief?

It's human nature to see something you can't do and then try to do it. Why bother scaling Everest? It served no purpose, but it was there and we did it. There should be no area of human existence where we refuse to advance ourselves - whether poverty relief, musical innovation, or space exploration. Mankind needs to do more, it needs to search higher. Knowing more about the universe is never a bad thing, and while cost-analysis should be taken into consideration, it borders on inhumane to deny our basic instincts for discovery.

Re:Towards the Moon

Actually, they did say that. Reread TFA.

The lack of a Saturn-class booster does pretty much kill the idea though. Neither Arianespace nor Energiya are going to fund the development of that kind of monster, not when there's no commercial use for it and no guarantee of continued political backing for manned Moonshots.

Hence the first related story linked from TFA [bbc.co.uk], which discusses the prospect of an ATV-derived spacecraft to launch on an Ariane 5. Much cheaper, and using existing kit. Funding for it might require political change in Britain, however, which has so far refused to get involved in manned projects.