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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.'"
Collection of random thoughts, aka A Brain Dump:
:-)
1. This news is older than the hills.
2. What's with the dates? The Clipper was supposed to be in service by 2010, not 2011. Originally this would have put it ahead of the CEV, but the latest projections have the CEV flying by 2008.
3. HOTOL, Skylon, Hermes; need I say more? Russia obviously wants the money for building, not the enigineering experience of the ESA.
4. "The Clipper would allow Russia and Europe to collaborate with the Americans on lunar exploration, allowing six astronauts to orbit the Moon and to act as a back-up rescue craft, if needed." I'd be happy if we collaborated, but I think it's a bit premature considering that Russia never landed anyone on the moon. Did they get close? Maybe. The details are a bit sketchy there. There certainly seems to be a coverup involved, but considering the number of "Moon Rockets" that Russia had blow up on the pad, I wouldn't have held my breath either way.
5. You'll note that Russia is looking at a winged vehicle. Lockheed proposed a lifting body for the CEV, but was turned down. I'm consoled, however, in that the CEV vehicle will be a small part of the future stack and very easy to replace. Even if the CEV flies capsules for the first couple of years, there's a strong liklihood that we'll go back to lifting bodies with reinforced carbon-carbon heat shielding. (For those of you who complain about carrying wings and landing gear into space, it really isn't that big of a deal. The problem with the Space Shuttle is that it's FREAKING HUGE so that it can carry satellite packages. Reduced to a more normal size for human cargo, its wings and gear wouldn't cost all that much in weight.)
6. "The Clipper also enhances the possibility of space tourism." I just love Russian zeal. Those guys are never worried about the, "Why not?" =)
7. "The development and operational side of the programme is expected to cost around 100m (£68m) euros a year." Am I the only one who thinks that price tag is a little low? Even if you expect Russia to take the brunt of the costs, you're still a billion or so Euros shy. According to this page, they are thinking of using the Zenit booster (now there's a hell of a ride) so I imagine that would help reduce the costs. Still...
Personally, I wish them the best of luck. If all goes well, maybe the ESA will build its own Clippers and begin flying them. Their recent Galileo system certainly suggests that Europe is finally looking to be technologically independent from the US.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
with russia involved with the rest of europe, now what's keeping them from researching a nuclear rocket?
It just seems like a great use of nuclear ability. I mean, space, nuclear reactions, the two just go so well together, like peanut butter and...and whatever else goes really well with peanut butter.
Is it still just public opinion about nuclear power? Because that's dumb.
This kind of thing is really interesting. Without the Russian space program honestly the ISS project would be dead right now. The American space program has had far more money invested in it, and while arguably more success, the success per dollar ratio may not be as good as the Russians. The real kicker is that the Russian space program has been mostly funded by the West (US & Allies) during the past decade while it has been really taking off. One area that may explain the differences in success are management and design philosophies. By being forced to operate on stricter budgets the Russians have relied on simplier designs and technologies. In effect they never had the opportunity to let a project BLOAT out of control. It's a good thing that the Russian program is recieving this investment and that this vehicle is being developed. It's likely that it will happen, unlike the myriad of plans that have come from the NASA side of the world. One can only hope that the US private industry picks up the reins from their government and keeps the US competitive with the Russians in the future space industry.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
1. Russia already has it engineered. Plans are made, mockups are built. Some test pieces are already constructed.
... the ESA didn't do shit for Clipper (formerly Klipper when it was an exclusively Russian project) other than potentially help fund it.
2. The vehicle will be launch on top of a Russian launch vehicle.
3. The vehicle will be launched from a Russian facility.
Therefore...
4. All Russia is just looking for capital to build. They know the US can't give them money due to the non-proliferation act (with exception, possibly, for a few soyuz flights with the condition that they support Space Station).
My angle? I hate the fact that people keep trumpeteering that "The ESA is so much better than NASA" "The ESA this" "The ESA that"
-everphilski-
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?
If it's using the same type of heat resistant tiles that the shuttle uses, then it would seem to have the same inherent problem with fragile tiles.
It's really quite simple. It's because the Chinese want to put a person on the moon. And the Europeans do. And the Indians do. And we do. But rather than collaborating and sending 7 or 8 different nationalities in one ship, we're each going to redesign the damn wheel, and spend billions of dollars in a new space race because no one country will play nice in the sandbox with the other countries. As an additional rant, screw the ships. Invest the money into technology that doesn't require us to use an assload of rocket propellant to get us off the planet. What happened to a space elevator by 2015?
Because everyone fears the word Nuclear. Build one nuclear propulsion craft, and it will go to the moon in one piece, land, launch, come back and land vertically, powered all the way. In one piece. Multiple times. On a single tank of fuel.
can't we just drop our own manned space vehicle plans and collaborate with Europe and the Russians on this thing? It's an elegant, simple design, gets the job done and is eminently reusable (what's with the "10-reuse capsule" thing?). It's even kinda pretty.
I'm sure the answer has something to do with feeding business to Boeing, Grumman, Lockheed, etc., but there's no reason those companies couldn't contribute to the development of a United Nations Space Administration (!) group-effort manned spacecraft.
And before you complain "look what happened with the ISS!", that was a MUCH larger-scope project with interests pulling on it from every direction. We basically all want the same thing here: a cheap, simple way of putting people into LEO, high earth orbit, LaGranges, and interplanetary space, depending on the booster technology.
I hate waste.
+++ATH0
I am just happy if we can get a useable stack going and can get back into space. After that point, we can redesign the CEV. Yeah, there will be some that will say that we need to stay with the current one (the new CEV, whatever it is). But I am guessing that once we have a more useable design (multiple parts that function more akin to a lego set) esp WRT to getting a heavy lifter, then we will tinker with each part. Perhaps the CEV will be judged to be harsh. Then offer up a Y-Prize.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The word is "cross-range", and yes, winged vehicles excel at this.
:). What 'cross-range' allows you to do is to land when your orbits groundtrack is further away from the landing site. A capsule can still land anywhere a lifting body can, but it may have to stay in orbit longer as you wait for your groundtrack to move over the landing site... this requires more life support in the capsule and limits the time you have to do useful things in orbit.
Don't be an ass, cross-range means the same thing as cross-track. Where I work we usually refer to it as cross-track because we also refer to along-track and out-of-plane. And yes, I do this stuff for a living.
Anway range usually means distance from the barycentre or from a tracking station. And cross-range could technically be any direction in the plane of sky.... cross-track is more specific if you think about it that way.
You might want to think about that again. In a capsule, you are going upward during ascent and downward during descent. During both manuvers, your nose is pointed up. (An oversimplification, but you get the idea.)
It doesn't matter what direction you're going, but the direction of the acceleration. The thrust during ascent is in the same direction as the drag during descent. So the force on the capsule occupants should be in the same direction.
During a winged landing, your descent is more gentle, and the nose of the craft follows the gentle slope.
You can have a capsule descend as gently as a winged vehicle... but since capsules can take a greater heat loading, you can also have them descend more steeply. There are no physics to stop a capsule from descending slowly.
This is where the cross-range ability comes in. Cross-range means that you can put your ship anywhere within thousands of miles of the intended landing zone.
No. You don't want to land within a thousand miles of the landing zone, you want to land at the landing zone
If you have a space station, it becomes harder to justify the need for greater cross-track against the lower cost and greater safety of a capsule. (and yes capsules are safer because of more benign heating during entry and just because they are simpler to construct and operate)
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.