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For Want Of A Soyuz

Posted by timothy on from the encapsulation dept.

sckienle writes "MSNBC has an article starting "Missions to the international space station may have to be suspended because Russia cannot afford to build new craft to carry crews there...." This is a problem because a Soyuz capsule must be attached to the ISS for emergency evacuation. The problem is further complicated because any one Soyuz capsule can only be docked to the ISS for 6 months maximum. Nor are they and their boosters built for reuse. The CNN version of the information is here. I guess we need to find more billionaires to take the space vacation. How about it Mr. Gates?"

2 of 32 comments (clear)

  1. Russian efficiency... by SofaMan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I always used to like the old story about how the NASA spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to get a ballpoint pen to work in space, and the Russians got around the problem by just using pencils.

    The Russians have always been pretty good at doing more with less, but I guess there comes a point when you can only do less with less.

    See what happens when you commit yourself to a proprietary solution to a problem, and then run out of money? What we need is some Open Source spacecraft... ;)

    --

    SofaMan -- Occasionally Battling Evil With His Mighty Powers Of Indolence.

  2. Re:So, whose idea was it... by Gerry+Gleason · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Well, you know it's an international project and there has to be something for each nation to do. If one government can make a toilet seat cost $600, what do you think it would cost when there is a commitee of governments?

    But seriously, Russia should have the resources long term to make their economy work so they are actually able to pay for their space program and live up to the commitments they make to international programs. Probably, it would be worth it for them to invest more of the currently scarce resources into the space program. They now have access to a lot more technology than they did when Soyuz was designed. Design something new, with current technology, for maximal reuse and flexibility. I bet that would do as much for their economy as the Moon program did for ours in the 60s. Good investment.

    Something similar could be said about the shuttle. Come to think of it, wouldn't it be nice if a long lived program like a shuttle was designed with the idea that you would upgrade and improve systems continuously over the live of the program. With the shuttles, I know the later ones had improvments, and probably some of those improvements got added to older birds (when it is possible), but if it was designed to be upgraded through its life as needed it would be easy. Doesn't it cost more to maintain the old systems?