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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.'"
This has nothing to do with relations. It has everything to do with the EU wanting to have access to it's own vehicles, and with Russia wanting an updated vehicle of it's own.
It's funny how we can't keep the political trolls out of even an article like this.
Well done is right. We should be welcoming this competition. It was the cold-war space race that got us to the moon before, and hopefully this competition from ESA/Russia will be enough to finally whip NASA back into shape. We had some fun experimenting with shuttles and space stations over the past couple of decades, but now it's time to jump-start the human exploration of space again.
Without either the US or the Russian space program honestly the ISS project would be dead right now.
I think that's why they called it the "International" Space Station.
Can anybody tell me why they're not going to put a human crew in this thing until 2020? Almost half a century after the first manned flights it's going to take 15 years to develop this thing?
Or is there something else going on here I didn't spot?
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I think you'll find that the European Space Agency and the European Union are two seperate entities, run by different people, funded in different ways. Whatever fate eventually befalls the EU, ESA should be able to carry on regardless.
Mod me down now and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
Also, mount engines aligned with the center of mass to reduce vibration. And have an escape tower for launch. :)
:)
Lots of lessons from the Shuttle. Lots of lessons.
... in Siberia, where Putin killed a fish with a speargun. He later claimed it was killed by Ukrainian separatists.
"DON'T use heat tiles when carbon-carbon shielding is available!"
Umm the leading edge that failed was carbon-carbon. The tiles have never caused a shuttle fatality. Also carbon-carbon is not as light as the tiles.
Bringing back the engines was a good idea and will be used again if we ever get a SSTO craft which I hope we do someday.
Big and complicated are not problems if it is reliable. A 747 is big and complicated.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Let's be clear, Clipper won't be of much use to rescue people actually on the Moon, since it won't have the capability to land on the lunar surface.
That said, there's orbiting the Moon and then there's obiting the Moon.
First, you can follow an elongated orbital path around Earth that just happens to get close enough to the Moon that it's gravity alters your path and swings you around the backside of the Moon and then towards Earth. That's the path followed by Apollo 8. The vehicle does not actually enter Lunar orbit.
Second, the vehicle uses internal rockets or thrusters to insert itself into a permanent Lunar orbit. Leaving orbit to return to Earth requires another application of thrust to accelerate out of orbit.
I suspect Clipper could handle the first variation, but not the second, making its rescue ability effectively nil.
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There is a fair chance the Russians would have either kept patching together the MIR or they would have done MIR 2 without the U.S. MIR was well past its prime but the Russians sure didn't want to deorbit it. They were forced to as condition for joining ISS. It takes enormous time, money and effort to get stuff in to space. Throwing away stuff that still worked was stupid.
MIR 2 would have been a challenge for the Russinas from a funding perspective a few years ago but thanks to soaring oil and natural gas prices Russia actually has a lot of money to burn these days. They are one of the world's larger oil and gas exporters. Siberia almost certainly still harbors vast unexplored reserves of fossil fuels, its one of the few poorly explored land masses left.
Zvezda and Zarya which form the core of the ISS were essentially designed for MIR 2.
I think its safe to say the Russians would have maintained their decades long presence in space stations with or without the U.S. I'm not sure NASA would have ever managed a space station on their own. They have suffered a huge erosion in capability since the Apollo days. When the Russians came on board they had proven designs for a space station. NASA hadn't flown any station hardware since Skylab.
On the plus side for the Russians the ISS infused a lot of money in to their space program at a key juncture in the post U.S.S.R economuc turmoil. On the down side I'm pretty sure they are completely fed up with having to partner with NASA at this point.
@de_machina
2. The vehicle will be launch on top of a Russian launch vehicle.
Which vehicle? I doubt if a proton is reliable enough. Since this is larger and heavier than the Soyuz it does not seem that there is a rocket in the Russian inventory that can orbit it, much less send it to the moon.
an ill wind that blows no good
I thought the main reason for using lifting bodies to to have greater crosstrack.. i.e., you can have a landing sight further away from your orbit's groundtrack which means you don' t have to sit around in your orbit waiting for the groundtrack to go over your landing site.
1. Fewer reverse Gs.
The deceleration from a capsule landing should be in the same direction as the acceleration during launch.... but for a lifting body the directions are different... which, to me, implies more problems with reverse g's for lifting bodies.
2. Gentle touchdown. (Apparently, Cosmonauts often receive injuries when the capsule hits the ground.)
The X-38 lifting body used a parafoil for its (gentle) landing... I see no reason why you can't use a similar system for a capsule.
3. The ability to control the flight.
You do have the ability to control the flight with capsules (Apollo did this)
4. Aerobraking manuvers become possible.
You can use capsules for aerobraking maneuvers (they should be better than lifting bodies even because of the higher heat loads.)
and from the grandparent:
the main reason for having a winged vehicle is that is the only way to get a capability to bring significant mass down from orbit
this isn't true... you should be able to bring more payload mass down from orbit with a capsule of a given weight because of less structural mass and less TPS.
Again, I'm pretty sure that the only reason to use a lifting body for entry is for the greater crosstrack.
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