Russia to Build New Spacecraft by 2020 101
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
Though to be fair, NASA still wins in the ideas department with advanced Saturn models, the NERVA rockets, and especially the completely reusable 500 ton Sea Dragon Rocket (which had a full design study). Hopefully the latter two ideas will be looked at again when the different space agencies consider building a spacecraft to travel to Mars.
Intentionally competitive (Score:3, Interesting)
If you take some time (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Practical Space Access (Score:2, Interesting)
I think you may have misunderstood me a bit. My point wasn't what the X-15 did then, but what the X-15 approach would have yielded by now. The X-15 program was intentionally limited as part of the decision to use adapted ICBM's for launching manned space vehicles.
At least some (maybe all) X-15 pilots have their astronaut wings because the higher flights achieved altitudes defined nationally and internationally as "space" (The service ceiling is officially reported at 67 miles). The pilots were given very clear orders about how high they were allowed to go. Even the original model 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. That would have brought the program into direct competition with Mercury, and that was deemed unacceptable.
The real story is that the original 1959 edition could, as you put it, "scratch space a little bit" repeatedly and land with no big deal. If allowed, even the original configuration could have done much more. Blown the doors off its competition, Project Mercury, without even cracking a sweat.
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.
For an apples-to-apples comparison, put the X-15 up against its direct competition, the Project Mercury space vehicle. You could barely shoehorn an astronaut into Mercury, it flew only 6 times (two of those sub-orbital). The program cost a billion and a half dollars.