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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."
There is nothing more depressing to me than listening to how other industrial countries' space programs are flourishing while ours stagnates. It's as if America has lost its sense of humanity. It doesn't even really care about exploration anymore. Or apparently anything. All it wants to do is consume. Sigh....
[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.
Russian space officials unveiled a full-scale model of the Kliper spaceship
The KDE team announced they will sue the Russian government over the use of the "klipper" name, which, as everybody knows, is the name of the KDE clipboard. An outraged free software community is currently demonstrating and marching on Capitol Hill and the Kremlin to demand that justice be meeted out of the space agency. In a gesture of goodwill, the Russian space agency has decided to rename their spacecraft "firefoks". News at 11...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
FTA: The Kliper itself was a reduced-sized version of an earlier unique design envisioned for launch on the Angara or Zenit launch vehicles in the 1990's (see Energia Spaceplane 1990's). This was larger and had the re-entry vehicle mounted nose-down in the launch vehicle.
I got interested in the launch vehicles and found this site very informative, it has illustrations and information on various Russian launch vehicles. Its amazing how much smaller the Zenit is compared to some of the others, specifically the RLA-150 and Vulkan.
My heart still goes with the Saturn V though.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
India is also looking at lunar and manned programs and already has launched its own satellites, etc. Private entries from the US, Canada and the UK (and other countries) can perhaps be considered separately from the goverment operations. There are now many players, some major (some declining, some expanding) and some minor (some expanding, some perhaps will never get off the ground). Exciting times ahead, I hope.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
Well, it's actually pretty simple.
Things that get Really Fsking Hot are black because the only thing that will handle the heat is a carbon-carbon composite.
Things that get Not So Hot are white because it's either that or beige or black when it comes to high temperature ceramics.
There are other alternative coatings like metal, but given that the Russians have already flown a craft with shuttle-like tiles, it's probably the case that they'll stick with those.
Except, of course, that when the Russians coppied the idea of putting tiles on their shuttles, they made them a smidge sturdier.
Paint has undesirable properties, so you want to minimize it's use on the higher-temperature surfaces. If you look at the shuttle, except for small red maintenence markings, they pretty much stuck with that.
Gentoo Sucks
the key is that we are not doing manned exploration. Sending people up in to space isn't exploration.
We have probes to many of the planets, Mars in paticular, we are going to smack a asteroid soon, and there are plans to a new space observatory.
Considering the costs associated with space I think the US is doing just fine. Hell, I like to wonder, where is everyone else?
Besides this is just a mock up, it is no more valuable to space travel than a brochure from marketing... actually that is what it is, an attempt to stir up interest in what they do.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Where the hell have you been?.
CEV, X-33, X-34, X-37, X-38, X-40, X-43.
Not to belittle this Russian effort which I think is terrific, but at this point, the Russian vehicle is no more than a concept and a full-scale mock-up.
NASA has been working on such projects for decades; whether or not they are funded is beyond their control...
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Thanks to the Slashdotting, the bandwidth bill alone will set their space program back decades...
Sigh. These are the mount points for the emergency escape system that is supposed to sit on top in the launch configuration. This, like the Soyuz, and unlike the Shuttle, features an escape system which is operational in every stage of launch all the way from launchpad to orbit insertion.
Wow, wow, get off your pills man, that's a conspiracy theory.
Ever heard of Shuttle-Buran? Yeah, it looked very much like a US shuttle about 20 years ago this is the same group (Energia was the name of the group and of the booster that was used to launch Buran,) only the Buran flew once and without a human on board, it was totally automated.
So first of all, they don't need to copy the US shuttle, they can just reuse some of their research from Buran. Secondly the color scheme? The color scheme has specific physical properties - white reflects radiation while black stores it. Besides, the compounds for the reentry shield tiles are never painted, and the silica based compounds are black, while carbon based compounds are gray.
You can't handle the truth.
From this tirade, we can all safely assume you have never had consensual sex with a woman.
It's a FREAKING TV SHOW, allright? Not real life. You should have listened to your mother when she told you to go play outside, join a team sport, and make new friends.