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Energia Reveals New Russian Spacecraft
colonist writes "Russian space officials unveiled a full-scale model of the Kliper spaceship. If funding is provided, Kliper will replace the Soyuz space capsule as Russia's human space vehicle. The spaceship, designed by RKK Energia, is twice the size of the Soyuz and will carry a crew of six. It has two main parts: a reusable re-entry craft with a lifting body design, and an orbital module. Like the Soyuz, it has a rocket to pull the spaceship away from the launch vehicle in an emergency. See this photo gallery, Encyclopedia Astronautica and RussianSpaceWeb.com."
With Russia going back to its space programmes, we're going to have more major players than during Cold War - that is, USA, Russia, China, maybe also EU.
Let's hope everyone - in contrary to recent US projects concerning space defense systems - remembers treaties about peace in space.
The nose of the craft looks suspiciously like the front-half of the NASA Space Shuttles, down to the white/black colorscheme.
How much of that has to do with design and how much has to with the function of things like the reentry tiles and hull shielding?
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Is it just me, or does this thing really looks SOOOOO much like runabouts from Voyager (sans warp nacelles, but I guess it's a Minor Mater of Engineering... :) )?
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[note: The newspaper photo on the MSNBC story looks like it's got a space shuttle mockup in the background. The "photo gallery" link has better images.]
Aside from the obvious color scheme borrowed from the US orbiters, this seems like it's really just incremental progress. Going from a 3-person Soyuz to a 6-person Klipper seems very much like one of the crew reentry vehicle concepts that have been floating around in the US for a while. One of those took an Apollo capsule, and extended it downwards a bit, to fit six people instead of three.
On the other hand, the "lifting body" design is interesting, if it'll work enough of the time (I'm gathering the parachute reentry option is for when the runways aren't available or weather doesn't cooporate).
On the gripping hand, I'm having Six Million Dollar Man flashbacks.
This looks rather like a step back towards thermal tiles which can be a problem in themselves when Soyuz uses one-big-heatsheild.
Also, the shape of the re-entry vehicle is rather like a Buran nose which suggest to me a somewhat longer re-entry than the Soyuz module which 'gets it over and done with'
I'm sure I've heard several times that the Shuttle/Buran re-entry technique is 'less-safe' compared with capsule re-entry due to the duration that the craft is actually being heated.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
"Kliper", eh? I'm sure any resemblance to the McDonnell-Douglas Delta Clipper is purely coincidental.
It's like deja-vu all over again!
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The Soyuz has been used for how long? I mean, I'm sure there have been internal systems upgrades, but the design is just so old that I thought they'd never change it. Then again, if it ain't broke, why fix it?
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Hey maybe we can buy the next gen launch vehicle from these guys instead of spending fat flow building our own expensive stuff ... and concentrate on other things such as Mars mission or earth monitoring / space probes.
Is there a simple physics explanation to this. Given that there are no visible control surfaces (although I suspect control surfaces are relatively useless at high speed) and the general shape is comparable to that of a brick (as opposed to the shuttle which is more of a brick with wings), why will this not roll over on reentry?
It appears to me that the Russians are used to working on a budget and design stuff to get the job done effectively. They may not be able to do all the things that NASA would like to do but are they necessary? Is that little bit extra worth 10x the cost?
One nice thing about the shuttle was you could do space walks to repair satelites,etc... You wouldn't be able to do that with Russia's model (even tho you can detach for upto 15 days) but i'm sure instead of a cargo bay you can design one that can handle those types of requirements.
Anyways, its nice to see at least one Country looking forward and it looks like they hit the nail on the head.
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Since I think there is considerable interest at the ESA for its own manned launch capability, how about ESA providing the funding for the completion of the Kliper project? A group like EADS could get the Russians to build Kliper spacecraft that could be launched from the new R-7 launchpad in Kourou in French Guiana at ESA's launch site.
Well, it's a bit hard to build something as complex as a spacecraft before you've designed it first, and that's the step that's just been taken with Kliper.
Your retort would be more valid if NASA was actually making similar progress: ie, designing possible STS replacements and giving its own manned programme some sort of direction. As it is, NASA seems to be (if you'll pardon the pun) in a terminally decaying orbit.
Whereas NASA's manned programme once had a clear vision and message - using the STS in conjunction with the ISS as a stepping stone to more orbitally-based research and then on to bigger and better things - now it's unclear where exactly NASA is heading.
Manned missions to the Moon? To Mars? Well, sure, those have been mentioned in "rallying the troops" kind of fashion after the Columbia disaster but where's the substance?
The reality of the situation is that the STS is grounded, and even when (if) it returns to flight status it's going to be a lame duck. And I don't even want to contemplate how disasterous another shuttle loss would be.
So, relatively speaking, given the inactivity of NASA, this Russian programme is flourishing. I don't know about you, but I'm glad that people with as much experience of manned spaceflight as the Russians haven't cashed out of this game just yet and are still willing, scientifically if not politically, to develop the technologies to further our exploration of space.
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I somehow find this very funny. I still remember reading that the russian space agency did not have the money to deliver the promised parts of the ISS. So it feels like they didn't have enough money to build the current space station, so they did the one thing they could do and designed the next one. ROFL
Poor talented but discarded engineers.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
they look alike, but in fact they are quite different.
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
Picture 26 in the photo gallery shows a close up of the front of the ship. But what are those three 50cal machine gun ports doing there? Have the Russians developed a space fighter?
Great! Kliper is about 14.5 tons in launch configuration, and Ariane 5G can launch 16 tons to LEO. Ariane 5G was designed for the Hermes space plane, so it should be feasible to man-rate it.
Let's hope that there will be a close cooperation between Europe and Russia. Rumours about Russia joining ESA already surface now and then. AFAIK the main prolem (next to authoritarian, non-democratic tendencies in Russia) is that the cuurent ESA treaty requires every member to pay a share of the common space projects. The treaty would have to be altered to allow Russia to pay it's share in hardware and services.
Nevertheless, this seems as a promising opportunity to me. Especially as a the article on russianspaceweb.com states that a major portion of the 10 bn. Rubel development costs is for the Onega booster, which wouldn't be required if Ariane 5 could be used.
The US Space Shuttle has significant capabilities - like returning heavy payloads back from orbit - that even *we* don't use. The primary return-mission for the Shuttle is to return the Leonardo module from the ISS. Leonardo, if you don't know, is a glorified trash can. Hell, if you compare the Saturn V launch capability to the Shuttle, the US space program took a giant step backwards because of the Shuttle (and associated politics.)
... and not in 1000kg chunks.
The Shuttle is the equivalent of a pickup truck that's been tasked with replacing tractor-trailers, Greyhound busses, garbage trucks, and NASCAR race cars. Sure, it's capable of performing all those funcitons, just don't expect it to perform any of them well.
Consider what space exploration would be like today if the Saturn V (or VI or VII) were in service today, in concert with a crew-only vehicle to transport the sentient meat. Use the Saturn booster to take the large, heavy ISS sections into (a useful) orbit, and haul the people up and down on a vehicle designed just for that. And while we're at it, just how do any future missions plan to escape earth orbit (to go places like, say, the Moon?) The Shuttle is incapable of getting out of LEO, so you ain't gonna use that. The Saturn series were the only ones that could get useful[*] payloads into a lunar insertion orbit. The Delta IV Heavy might be able to do it, but it'll be a smaller payload than a Saturn, and it'll be sans meat.
[*] I use the term "useful" here because it's obvious we can get 1000kg to Mars or to the Moon or to interesting comets. But in terms of establishing a manned presence on another planet/moon, we need to send lots more than that