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."

Space Shuttle

[cd-w]

The United States beat the Soviet Union in developing multiple-use Space Shuttle rockets, which form its current fleet of manned spacecraft.

... and we now know what a big mistake that was:

• Limited to low-earth orbit.
• Vulnerable to damage on launch.
• Over-complex tile-based heat shield.
• Very expensive to launch.
• No launch escape system.
• Not actually very reusable at all.

Practical Space Access

[hyades1]

If they want to be practical about getting to space, the old X-15 program had it down pat. Three vehicles, 200 flights in less than 10 years. One fatal crash. You launched the thing from a plane or a balloon. No waste, no fuss. And because you're not constantly throwing something the size of a young apartment building into orbit, a single accident doesn't effectively knock you out of space for years. It couldn't carry much more than the pilot, but only an idiot would doubt that by the third generation (the original RFP's went out in the mid-50's) it would have carried a reasonable payload.

I think it all started to go wrong for NASA when politicians were allowed to their poke their long, ratlike noses into the business of scientists and engineers. If not for the damned shuttle program, there'd be a crew drinking beer on Mars by now.

The Space Race is a Rich Nation's Game

[reporter]

Russia is not yet a wealthy developed nation. According to the CIA World Factbook [cia.gov], the Russian GDP per capita is $12,200. By contrast, the Polish GDP per capita is $14,400, and the Poles are not investing in a wasteful space race.

The Russians need to stay focused on modernizing their economy and political system. Russia still has considerable poverty, and the money wasted on the space race would be better spent on welfare programs and the education system. At the same stage of development, the Japanese did not waste money on either a space race or a massive weapons program.

Unfortunately, the Russians have become obsessed with nationalism since Vladimir Putin came to power. Big, impressive national projects have become more important than simply improving the quality of life for the poorest segments of the population.

The Russians have a lot to learn from the Poles. The latter are not wasting money on either a space race or a massive weapons program.

The most important lesson that the Russians can learn from the West is that the greatness of a nation is not measured by the size of the weaponry or the speed of the space ship. Rather, the greatness is measured by the quality of life for the average person.

The Soviet Union had awesome weapons and space vehicles, yet was the Soviet Union a great nation?

beat Soviets as well in wasting money

[xristo70]

"The United States beat the Soviet Union in developing multiple-use Space Shuttle rockets, which form its current fleet of manned spacecraft."

The United States (together with Europe) have also beaten the Soviet Union in wasting countless billion of dollars on an International Space Station of very limited research value. Basically they just trying to try to stay alive up there and do 30 minutes of research projects per day. The Shuttle is currently also just a pork-barrel project. Those funds need to be spent in different ways (such as next generation planetary rovers).

The Russians have managed to keep their total costs for development and launches lower over the decades, by having at least some sort of "mass production" economies of scale.
Their MIR space station managed to get along for years against increadible odds, for a fraction of NASA money.
The Russians have very good and practical aerospace engineers. This illustrates the difference nicely: during the space race NASA spent money and effort in developing a pen which could work in weightlessness. The russian astronauts instead of pens used pencils in space.

Revisionists unleashed!

[dbIII]

The shuttle was nothing but an attempt to appease the moronic treehuggers

Another attempt to blame a bunch of rare and disorganised hippies with no political power at all at the time for some dubious political decisions mostly about spreading the pork. The shuttle design is most likely a lot older than the poster and "moronic treehuggers" don't even have the political clout to get Kyoto signed now let alone sabotage a space program decades ago.

Re:rockets vs shuttle

[IhuntCIA]

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.

RTG's (nuclear powered thermal generators) are:

1. heavy: the size of one that would be of use is so great that rover must be made huge, and expensive / impossible to launch to Mars. NASA's choice was solar, I guess they know better.
2. dangerous: in case of bad launch someone has to find damn thing, or its peaces. Solar panels are safe to be left where they are...

Re:The Space Race is a Rich Nation's Game

[Cyberax]

You do realize that Russian space program is mostly self-financing in the first place? You know, people pay money to launch commercial satellites.

Besides, Russian economy is much bigger than Polish - so $10000000 for space program take less than $1 from each citizen.

GDP per capita is very misleading: Luxembourg currently leads with $81511 (against measly $43223 in USA). So should USA just stop all scientific programs and channel all money to welfare?

Re:rockets vs shuttle

[Eunuchswear]

Your numbers for the Space Shuttle are misleading in comparison to the others.

No they're not, they're the whole point about what's wrong with the shuttle. If your job is to put things into orbit don't take bloody wings with you - it's a waste of payload.

100 tons to LEO is nice, it's a pity 70% of it is useless.

Re:rockets vs shuttle

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be a dipshit. The comparison of the GP was for spacecraft. Saying that the Space Shuttle costs $450 million to put 22 tons into space while the super advanced European and Russian rockets can do it for hundreds of millions is misleading at best. A better comparison would have been something like a Delta IV rocket or an Atlas V rocket. Using the Space Shuttle as a comparison was done simply to make it look like NASA couldn't figure out how to put 20 tons into space without spending half a billion dollars. The GP was trying to intentionally mislead people and you know it.

Manned spacecraft don't have a high cargo/total weight ratio. The Soyuz craft has basically a zero ratio. The Shuttle comes in at about 1/4. This is how manned spacecraft work. You may think that the Shuttle is a waste of money and that it is not worth it to put so many support systems into the spacecraft as well as trying to make it reusable and able to operate in space for weeks at a time (and I do as well), but it is intentionally misleading to compare it to a cargo craft. It is not a cargo craft. That is just one of its many abilities.

Exploration wins in the end

[plnrtrvlr]

Egads people..... The shuttle has a long list of problems and shortcomings. It's expensive and it isn't as reliable as the designers had hoped, NASA and the politicos who control the purse strings have finally come to a consensus on this point. Can we finally stop beating a dead horse? Every space-craft that we've launched -and by "we" I mean the human race, not just Americans- has had strengths and weaknesses. It's early in the game here people: a good analogy would be that the Europeans are just realizing that Columbus found a "new world" and not a shortcut to the far East. There have been a lot of people who have realized the right way of doing things for a long time, but like those early Europeans coming to the new world, it takes time to convince the people who have the money. There was a lot of begging for money, saying "I've got a plan that will work." Furthermore, there were a lot of failed starts in the new world: settlements that collapsed and vanished or packed up and left... This is not the time to say that spending money on manned space exploration is a waste so let's give up: of course it's wasteful right now, we're still figuring out the best way to go about it! There are those in Russia that have come to realize that someday the economic health of good ol' terra firma will depend on what we do in space, and they hope to be on the leading edge and therefore profit from it: I say good luck to them, the world needs their efforts. There are those in the USA, Germany, China, Japan, India (the list goes on) who agree and want their contries to be on that leading edge too: good luck to them as well. There are going to be a lot of false starts and a lot of wasted money, but in the end, we will find the best way by trial and error and forge ahead until space becomes the next economic powerhouse, the powerhouse that takes the world into new prosperity and health.

More practical ways for nations to compete?

[argent]

Like military invasions?!

If every dollar George spent in Iraq had gone to space instead, we'd all be better off.

Re:The Space Race is a Rich Nation's Game

[thanasakis]

No, most people would still want to work to have an even better life and acquire more goods. People should be free to work and improve their lives, but not having to be afraid that something unexpected might happen so that they'll end up in the streets.

Besides, this is not fantasy, those countries I mentioned have implemented schemes that mostly work. I don't see 20-30% unemployment in Sweden.

Re:The Space Race is a Rich Nation's Game

[ColdWetDog]

Healthcare may be relatively crappy in Russia, but at least it's free, and I (or my 7 year old son) won't be left to die in the gutter from common flu if I can't afford a doctor or buy prescription drugs.

You do realize that if you or your son (or anybody else) is "dying in the gutter" from anything, you can wander into the nearest Emergency Room in the US and get health care that isn't based on your ability to pay. Not that the system is perfect, mind you. Not that you will appreciate the rather largish bill you will eventually receive (if you're foolish enough to give them your correct address), but you will be cared for. Your statement is a bit hyperbolic there.

Besides we've tried the "welfare state" bit. Unevenly, of course. Full of paperwork and fury. Subject to the whims of the budget and locality (the US is a tad larger than Sweden). It works rather poorly to improve the human condition. In my neck of the woods, most members of the various Native Alaska tribes get some form of guaranteed income (varies from tribe to tribe). That still hasn't eliminated poverty, alcoholism, drug use, physical abuse and all of the other flotsam and jetsam of living on the low end of the economic line. Perhaps if they (and everyone else) got guaranteed six figure incomes, things would be different. I'll vote to try that out if you can figure out how to pay for it.