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Europe to Join Russia Building Next Space Shuttle
An anonymous reader writes "Development agreement takes shape during the Paris Air Show
It's all but official--Russia and Europe will soon embark on a cooperative effort to build a next-generation manned space shuttle. Speaking at the Paris Air Show, in Le Bourget, France, in June, Russian space officials confirmed earlier reports from Moscow that their partners at the European Space Agency would join the Russian effort to build a new reusable orbiter, dubbed Kliper."
If this goes like other discussions on this and similar topics about advanced technologies appearing in various parts of the world, it will split into two camps. One camp that thinks it will be cool because new tech is always cool. The other camp will lament that North America is falling behind. To the latter I say that it is not North America falling behind, but rather the rest of the world is catching up. That's inevitable and that's good. Don't doubt that we don't have a new shuttle on the board somewhere too. The the other camp. I say this new shuttle will be cool. It will be interesting to see what approach they take in designing it based on years of observing the North American program.
Why NASA is using a shuttle that is 20 years old is beyond me.
It may well be beyond you, but 20 year old equipment is commonplace for most aerospace equipment. 20 years is mid-life for passenger airliners. Airlines are routinely launched with no aircraft newer than 15 years. Military aircraft see 30+ years and more.
The fact that the orbiter is 20 years old is not relevant. The design intended that the vehicle last through many flights; that was the whole point. Unfortunately, the design ignored basic physics and presumed that some magic propulsion system would exist to get the plane into orbit without 90% of the launch weight being fuel. When the engineer's magic wand failed to create such an engine, they bolted on boosters and fuel tanks and left us with the present costly, low capacity and inefficient launcher.
NASA is on the road to fixing this. Griffin has a clear vision for the future launch platform; separate the cargo from the crew, put the payloads on top, reuse the high quality and well understood booster and shuttle main engine designs for propulsion, de-orbit the crew in a lifting body capsule, and do it quickly so we don't have to keep flying these space planes. It should be cheap, reliable and flexible.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Hasn't it been proven that a Shuttle type transport is not the most cost effective way of lifting heavy loads and even for things like simple manned space flight?
It has only been demonstrated that the Shuttle, in it's half completed "still a prototype" design, is not an overly cost effective way of putting up payloads.
A number of additional steps in the program, cut by congress, would have significantly helped.
Rod Taylor
It's looking like there should be quite a bit of competition soon in human orbital spaceflight. Here are the various competitors I can think of off-hand:
* USA: Shuttle-derived system, probably with a CEV capsule on top. There's several downsides to a shuttle-derived system, but it keeps the constituencies happy and should have enough government momentum to keep on going.
* Russia and Europe: Kliper's been searching around for financial support for a while, and it looks like they finally got at least -some- funding from Europe.
* China: various iterations of Shenzhou spacecraft
In the private sector:
* t/Space: The (Rutan-affiliated?) company just completed a parachute drop test and water landing of a full-scale model of their proposed CXV space capsule. It's uncertain if they'll get more funding from NASA, but their concept seems sound and may get private investment. Oh, and their web page has some really spiffy videos.
* SpaceX: They've already announced their intent to compete for Bigelow's orbital prize, and their upcoming man-rated Falcon V will be large enough to carry a Gemini-style capsule.
Now what about destinations? Besides the ISS, we've got Robert Bigelow's inflatable space station modules, which should be up and operational by 2010, with several prototype launches before then. He's planning on selling these modules to various groups and countries, so hopefully we'll have several different space stations up there.
Between Shenzhou 8 and 9 China is planning on launching a small orbital laboratory, which Shenzhou 9 will be docking with. Various members of the Chinese space program have also been visiting Bigelow's facility, so perhaps we'll see them doing something with his modules.
The future should be interesting.
I know that this will be considered to be flame bait, but in my opinion it is the truth. The Russians and Europeans collaborating without the US is a direct response to the Bush administrations contempt of international cooperation. The Bush administration has make it clear in every possible way that that the only correct position on any subject is the US position. When the rest of the world disagrees the response is a mix of anger, contempt and disdain.
This is true from the war in Iraq to the Koyoto treaty to appointing Bolton to the UN. After that kind of treatment it is only natural that everyone else will decide that they don't need the US and will go about building the future without US involvement.
This is a very bad development for everyone. The big problems like space, global warming and war need cooperation from all the international community, and splitting into competing factions will only lead to failure.
I'm very upset over this, because we all loose.
That's was one of the shuttle's original selling points. Unfortunately, the cost of the shuttle flight is more than the cost of simply replacing the satellite in almost every case (Hubble being the one exception). And yet there's a more fundemental problem.
The shuttle doesn't go high enough. It can only get to low earth orbit, which is thousands of miles below the fast majority of satellites (in geosynchronous orbit). It was supposed to go to GEO orignally, and when they realized that wouldn't be possible they proposed a "space tug" to ferry the satellite back and forth. That never materialized. So we're stuck with a ship that, even if it could be operated cheaply enough to be worthwhile, couldn't actually get to the repair job for most satellites.
"Yeah, it was cooperation and not competition that put a man on the moon!"
Y'know, I'm gonna burn some karma here. But there are times I really hate this attitude.
When I was a kid, say, early 1970s, I picked up an old book on the planets and the "future" of space flight. This book was written probably around 1959 or 1960. It talked about Sputnik and Explorer I. And it talked about how man would get into space. The book started with the "space plane" (what I learned in later years would be considered the X-20). It sat at the top of a rocket, was launched into orbit, and landed again like a normal airplane. The book then talked about the next big step--a space station constructed in orbit. This looked remarkably like the space station shown in 2001. The book ended with what would be the next big step--probably sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s--of an expedition to explore the moon.
Well, of course, we beat that by 20 years! We landed on the moon in 1969! But what did we get out of it? Are we on the moon now? Could we do more with the moon now, if we were to land on it again, than plant some flags and play some golf?
Your vaunted "competition" to get us to the moon gained us very little in the long run. Yeah, we made it and we developed some pretty impressive technology to do it, which had all sorts of commercial benefits. But we didn't go to the moon to explore. We didn't go to the moon to expand humanity. We went to the moon to beat the Commies. And once that was accomplished, we were done.
I liken it to a 240,000 mile race. We're all excited at the approach of the race. We discuss, debate, and argue about who we think will win. When the race starts, we are glued to our seats. Whoever wins, we cheer, we applaud, slap them on the back and say what a great job they did. But a week after the race, it's business as usual. The winner's name is written in the history books and that's it.
The American Public wasn't behind the Apollo program in order to broaden mankind's knowledge of the universe. We were behind it to whoop some Commie butt and show the world how great the U.S. of A was. And so, when the race was won, the banners were taken down, the streets swept clear of the ticker tape from the parades, and people went back to their own business secure in the knowledge that their country was #1.
That, to me, is what our "competition" to get to the moon got us. Getting to the moon was sold to the people as a race which we had to win. The money spent on Apollo was taken from programs like the X-20. It short-circuited plans for a permanent space station. It put all our resources behind one big "show"--get to the moon. We're only now starting catch up to where we might have been in the late 1970s, if only we had hadn't gotten distracted by beating the commies to the moon.
Consider the concept of "competition": You have an objective--a thing you have to accomplish. If you reach the objective before the others, you win. If you don't, you lose. I'm not interested in that. I'd like to see colonies on the moon. I'd like to see manned exploration of Mars. But these are long-term things--there is no "competition." And if we waste the money on "flags and footprints" kinds of missions so we can thrust our collective index fingers in the air and yell "We're #1!", the long term goal of having my children or my children's children live and work on the moon will never be realized.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Apollo wasn't an amazing achievement. But everyone complains about the fact that we didn't follow-up Apollo with more and better trips to the moon. But as I said, this wasn't how Apollo was sold to the people. It was sold as a competition. And competitions are over when somebody wins. I want the follow-up. And the only way we'll get it is to stop thinking about "beating" other countries and start thinking about how we can do this "for all mankind."
Isn't that what the plaque says it's all about?