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Euro-Russian Manned Space Vehicle Planned
drachton writes "BBC News reports that the 'European Space Agency (ESA) is proposing joining forces with Russia to develop a new vehicle for human spaceflight, the Clipper.' The head of the ESA permanent mission in Russia also told BBC that the Clipper 'is meant to service the space station and to go between Earth and an orbit around the Moon with six crew members.'"
Original article here.
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.
The clipper design appears to be a shuttle-like space plane. Have there been any significant materials improvements that make a space plane built today more pratical and safer than the current shuttle deisgn?
Yeah, don't make it so damn big and complicated; don't tie the engines into the main craft; and DON'T use heat tiles when carbon-carbon shielding is available!
Does that answer your question?
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I do not like the fact that the shuttle-derived launch vehicle uses solid rocket boosters.
I'm sure NASA would love to obtain more control over launches by reengineering a kerosine rocket like the F-1s on the Saturn V, but the fact of the matter is that we have the SRBs now and they work. (They work extremely well too! Over twice the power of the F-1 engines on the Saturn V!) It would be a waste of time for NASA to develop new hardware when they already have a solution.
I do like the fact it uses shuttle main engines for the upper stage though.
Actually, the SSMEs fire for the entire launch duration. The launch profile is very similar to the Space Shuttle, but with five SSMEs instead of three.
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