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Russian Sub Launches European Inflatable Space Vehicle

Posted by michael on from the man-overboard dept.

QueueEhGuy writes "From the 'Red Planet' meets 'Hunt for Red October' department: CNN is reporting in this article that the Russian navy launched an inflatable space reentry vehicle atop a standard ICBM. Although this one was evidently only 2.5 ft in diameter, they evidently plan on making larger versions to act as life rafts or carrier pigeons from space back to Earth. Apparently, neither Val Kilmer or Sean Connery were involved in the test."

2 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. BFD -- that kind of tourism isn't sustainable by js7a · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Frankly, all this attention to manned missions is distracting, when we should be concentrating on finding extrasolar terrestrial planets.

    It's a resource allocation issue: We should not be sending tourists up temporarily when we know of nowhere perminant for them to go. We should be concentrating on terrestrial planet finding and then generation starships. Let the tourists be the first to see Mars up close -- fine -- but only after we learn the paramters of a generation starship colonization. Then, build one and send it back and forth between here and Mars long enough to prove the design. Then send a real one off to start more eggs in another basket.

    If the tourists can pay enough to sponsor terrestrial planet searches, building generation starships, cleaning up their rockets' mess, in addition to the travel expenses, then more power to them. Don't count your rich tourists before you find a place to hatch more of them.

  2. inflatable space station by g4dget · · Score: 4, Interesting
    In fact, inflatable structures could be great for all sorts of space applications. In the absence of gravity or wind, you really don't need much in the way of structural support. Inflatable structures can give you a huge volume with very little weight. And, yes, they can be made safe against puncture by space debris--probably safer than rigid structures.

    Unfortunately, even though an inflatable module was considered for the ISS, it was not built. Pretty much all our space engineering seems to be done in terms of big, heavy, metal structures.

    Interest seems to be picking up, though. There has been a workshop at ESA recently.