Slashdot Mirror
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."
You'd think they'd find a replacement for their funds creation.......given the fact that they've promised many projects alot of money and have never come through with it.
A couple of points...
Aerodynaics don't mean jack regardless of gravity. Within an atmosphere they are a big deal, of course. Which leads to the idea of building a space station close to Earth, and when it's proven, you can send the station itself off to Mars.
Also (and somewhat trollishly), mutually assured destruction being a good war deterrent sounds like a good reason for the US to STFU about other countries having nuclear programs.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Uh, why bring an inherintly more expensive, more complex, and more unsafe space craft to life? In my opinion Russians are lucky to have terminated their shuttle program early on. If Russians had to fly shuttles today, they surely would been broke. Look at NASA. Much of their technical and financial problems come from shuttle. It's an overhypped and bloated design that that should have never existed in the first place. The cost of a _single shuttle lunch_ equals the size of the entire anual Russian space budget, yet Russians are somehow able to launch at least half a dozen conventional rockets to the ISS missions every year with what they have not counting their other minor projects. The only thing that Russians should be upset about is that they didn't terminate their Buran project even earlier.