Slashdot Mirror
European Space Shuttle Prototype Lands Safely In Sweden
This Nick Is Taken writes "Yahoo! News reports the successful test of a German designed prototype of the European space shuttle, Phoenix , taking place in the north of Sweden, moving the first all European mission into space one step closer."
Come on Dubya, you can't let those smelly europeans beat us in space travel! on another note, I believe russia actaully had a functioning space shuttle in the 80's, but the scraped it when the cold war ended.
Actually, shuttle Buran, as it was called, was technologically more advanced than contemporary American Space Shuttles. It sported, among other things, remote controlled landings. Shuttle Phoenix seems to go one step further and allow for automatic landings.
OK guys now this is getting funny... Since the last attempt in the 80's by the Russians there was no success, neither by Russians nor by Americans to replace the ancient Space Shuttle, still it was used since last year (remember that little 'incident' that happened at that time?). Now the ESA comes up with an alternative to that old scrap metal which is furthermore compatible to the next-generation Ariane-5 and everything I read up to now were negative comments? Start thinking optimistic! Maybe this really is the first step to the next generation of manned space flights, as the Phoenix need much less resources to be taken into orbit as everything before! Only very few tons of things can be transported with one flight into space because even rocket + shuttle alone are much to heavy... so what's the point in being conservative? Trust german engineers, maybe they know what they're doing, without their rockets even the NASA would probably still simulate their Apollo-Missions on earth instead of having a nice little flag up there ^^