Russia to Build New Spacecraft by 2020

Tech.Luver passed us the word that Russia is now working on a new generation of spacecraft, presumably to help fuel its renewed space exploration ambitions. The Space-based industry is still one of the few areas in which Russia is intentionally competitive, and they intend to exploit that in the coming years. Even still, the new technologies are not expected to see use until 2020. ""A tender to design a new booster and spaceship has been announced," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Roskosmos chief Anatoly Perminov as saying ... Perminov did not give further details of the tender, but said TsSKB-Progress from the Volga city of Samara is likely to bid with its Soyuz-3 design of spacecraft, as well as Moscow's Khrunichev centre with Angara 3P and Angara 5P. The United States beat the Soviet Union in developing multiple-use Space Shuttle rockets, which form its current fleet of manned spacecraft. Russian space officials have said single-use spacecraft like the Soyuz-TM currently used are cheaper and more practical."

Re:rockets vs shuttle

[SamP2]

yeah wow so the rocket is cheaper... pity it carries a fraction of the shuttles payload

Yes, and you always use a 16-wheeler to drive your kids to school, right?

The vast majority of space launches which currently use the shuttle, transport people or regular vital supplies (food, water, etc) to the ISS. The shuttle was not designed for, and cannot do any missions other than low-earth orbit (ISS, Hubble, etc).

In those cases where you really need large cargo (such as lifting components of the ISS), you can use other rockets, such as Delta V or the upcoming Ares-IV (which, by the way, intends to replace the unreliable shuttle in the first place).

The shuttle was nothing but an attempt to appease the moronic treehuggers by creating the illusion of "recycleable" craft, even though (1) the difference in price between launching a shuttle and a light rocket could pay for reducing emissions in other areas that would bring much greater net benefit to the ecology, and (2) consuming the fuckton of fuel to launch a heavy-ass shuttle that carries two people negates any "cleanliness" achieved by just throwing 75% of the shuttle (boosters go, remember?) instead of the ~95% when rocket goes, capsule comes. In an effort to appease the same treehuggers we were periodically stuck with forced solar panels on rovers instead of nuclear power, which among other things forces our Mars rovers to hibernate through the winter instead of working as usual. Thank God that with New Horizons and further nuclear-powered missions we finally got over the yoke.

Re:rockets vs shuttle

[jamstar7]

Shuttle carries 26.8 tons [wikipedia.org] into LEO. NASA was budgetted $368 million per launch in 2001, but it actually takes about $450 million [nasa.gov].

The Ariane 5G [wikipedia.org] can lift 17.6 tons into LEO for a cost of about $165 million [corwm.org]

While not mentioned in TFA, the Soyuz 3 [russianspaceweb.com] would be able to put 17.8 tons into LEO. If they can get the price comparable to the Ariane, they'll have a winner.

Don't count the Russians out of the race just yet.

Re:beat Soviets as well in wasting money

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post is full of utter bullshit. I'm not going to take time to refute it all but I will recommend that you stop making such stupid generalizations about two agencies that often have different goals. And you could at least look up some of your claims at Snopes [snopes.com] for chrissake. No doubt you thought that was unnecessary since you felt that the proof that NASA is full of fuckups is self evident.

Re:Practical Space Access

[grumbel]

Isn't there that little problem that the X-15 doesn't give you space access? It scratches space a little bit and then it goes back to the ground, just like SpaceShip One. Its a nifty thing, but you can't get into orbit that way, since neither altitude nor velocity are even close to what they should be.

NASA Space Pen urban legend

[TimSSG]

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/613/1 [thespacereview.com]

The Million Dollar Space Pen Myth is just that, a myth. The pens never cost a lot of money and were not developed by wasteful bureaucrats or overactive NASA engineers. The real story of the Space Pen is less interesting than the myth, but in many ways more inspiring. It is not a story of NASA bureaucrats versus simplistic Russians, but a story of a clever capitalist who built a superior product and conducted some innovative marketing. That story, however, is a little harder to sell to a public that believes what it wants to believe.

Tim S

Re:Revisionists unleashed!

[mbone]

The big space shuttle design flaw (the solid rocket boosters) was driven by a very stupid Air Force mission requirement (single orbit return to base
reconnaissance missions) which to put it mildly was not thought out, and which was not challenged sufficiently by NASA.

At the time, reusable rockets were widely seen in the space establishment as the way to cut the cost of on-orbit delivery. What people hadn't
thought through was the cost of ground support, which is very high for the Shuttle. Even if the Shuttle flight hardware was free, it still wouldn't be economical to operate compared to Soyez. Realistically, as soon as the shuttle launched we should have started designing the next version, taking into account what we had learned from the first attempt. We are now 20+ years behind the curve now, and it shows.

Re:Practical Space Access

[DerekLyons]

The X-15 program was intentionally limited as part of the decision to use adapted ICBM's for launching manned space vehicles.

Nonsense. The X-15 program was never intended to go into orbit - it was built to do exactly what it did do, explore hypersonic and high altitude flight. (Though it could only do one or the other on any given mission.)
 
 

Even the original model [X-15] was space-capable, and if reports are correct, in one case the pilot was threatened with career death if he allowed his vehicle to achieve orbit.

ROTFLMAO. The X-15 was no more capable of reaching orbit than the minivan sitting in my driveway is. As it is, the 60 odd miles altitude it reached was the extreme outer limits of it's altitude performance.
 

The X-15 flew 200 times for only $300 million. That was nearly half a century ago. I think it's reasonable to assume that they could have made an improvement or two to make the thing truly space-capable if we'd gone down that road.

The proposed (and never built) space (orbital) version of the X-15 was an entirely new craft. New engines, new heatshield, new structure, new life support, new guidance, etc... etc... It was anything but an 'improvement or two' on the X-15 as built.
 
I don't know where you got your information on the X-15, but to put it simply - it's utterly wrong. You have an extremely inflated and utterly incorrect idea of it's capabilities.

Re:What happened to Kliper?

[tftp]

The whole story here [wikipedia.org].

But to summarize, the project was offered for bids in 2006, and none of the bidders could meet the specifications. Then European space agency came along and offered to work together on something else (KK Soyuz and ATV) and that was technically achievable. So the Klipper project got postponed until 2010-2015, and the resources reassigned to the ESA work. We don't have technology yet to build Klipper with planned capabilities and for planned cost (reusability strikes again, probably.)

Re:More practical ways for nations to compete?

[Anonymous Coward]

If every dollar George spent on Iraq was burned or used for tapestry we would still be better off.

Re:Practical Space Access

[rbanffy]

It would be impossible to make the X-15 LEO-capable with one or two generations. You just can't pack that much rocket into that small vehicle and expect it to achieve orbital speeds. There is a limit on how much energy you can carry with you. It's not only about how high you can go, but how fast.

The only device that could pack the kind of punch needed to launch useful payload to LEO with a X-15 sized vehicle would be a nuclear-thermal device. NERVA and ROVER had problems of radioactive exhaust and would be damn hard to justify unless there were no alternatives. Current designs can be much more cleaner and it could be possible to build something the size of an X-15 that could boost itself to LEO with a useful payload.

Another interesting approach could be to make the carrier plane fly faster and higher still with air-breathing engines (so that it would not require carrying oxidizer for the first part of the launch) easing the burden on the spacecraft propulsion system. Still, keep in mind that Mach 2, 3 or even 4 would be only about a fraction of what you need to get into LEO.