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."

Comments

Incremental progress?

[dschuetz]

[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.

Re:The US's Space Program

[WIAKywbfatw]

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.