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.'"

Comments

Re:A Few Comments

[cheesybagel]

Guess which is the highest-payload rocket in the market right now? That is right, the 10 ton Ariane 5 ECA.

As for Clipper, while it looks interesting, Russia's past experience with Buran TPS was allegedly less than stellar, with the thing returning with a lot of tiles blown off and the chassis warped from the temperatures at reentry. What Russia is great at is designing capsules. To me this seems to be basically a waste of money for political goodwill reasons. ESA should have just got the data from ARD off the drawer and made a cheap capsule.

This will most likely need a new rocket, possibly new or requalified engines, new launch facilities, and then you will have to put a winged vehicle on top of a rocket, which to the best of my knowledge no one has got working yet.