Russia Working on Soyuz Replacement

Buran writes "The Associated Press is reporting that RKK Energia is starting design work on a new manned spacecraft able to carry a crew of six (or more) to the International Space Station. The vehicle may have a reusable crew module (current Soyuz TMA and Progress vehicles are disposable) and would theoretically finally allow ISS crew size to increase, as the current limiting factor is the capacity of the Soyuz spacecraft, designed in the early 1960s for manned lunar flights. (While Soyuz never flew to the Moon, its Zond circumlunar variant did so several times, and Soyuz and Progress craft have been resupplying various space stations for over three decades.) It will be interesting to see how this develops, as at present ISS crews spend more time maintaining the station than they do performing research, due to the fact that the station wasn't designed to operate with a crew as small as two or three people."

Comments

Super Soyuz has been proposed before

[zzabur]

Russians have been designing larger and possibly reuseable Soyuz-type spacecrafts for long time. The original mission was ferrying military cosmonauts to Almaz and Polya military space stations. A later design was Zarya resusable space craft to be launched with Zenit booster. Project was cancelled on financial grounds back in 1989, but the technology has been further developed in connection with ISS and Sea Launch projects.

Russia should bring back Buran

[randomized]

There is a project that russians were working on awhile back. It is shuttle like and was tested number of times during cold war. I suppose most of people here wouldn't know about it ala Lunokhod.

New project based on that technology is MAKS (mnogocelevaya aviacionno-kosmicheskaya sistema) which claims to be able to reduce cost per kilogram down to 1K usd. (from 12-15 nowdays). It's not space elevator, but definitely more possible at this time.

Read about Buran and MAKS here -
http://www.buran.ru/

Re:Wait a minute

[arivanov]

Their economy is in a slum right now; how are they paying?

Get a clue.

Read some actual reports on Russian economy

Russia still has regions living in extreme poverty, but as an overall economy it has had a year on year GDP grouth of 7+ for the third year running. So in fact economically, it has no problem in affording it.