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Russian Kliper not Funded by ESA

Posted by samzenpus on from the you're-cut-off dept.

anzha writes "It seems that while the Russians are making plans for the future, they are doing so alone. Space.com has an article profiling the Russian Kliper program. Largely seen as a response to the American CEV, the Russians had been stating the ESA would be supporting the enterprise as well. However, this week, ESA decided not to fund the project."

2 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. rtfa by moosesocks · · Score: 5, Informative

    RTFA.

    The ESA has tenatively decided not to fund the project for now citing political concerns that may be addressed by Russia in the future in order to gain much-needed financial support.

    Nothing has been decided. Russia will probably try to sweeten the deal if the ESA flat out decides not to support the project.

    On the scientific side of things, I hear that Kliper is very promising, and has already progressed further along than the CEV, and is technically superior. This is on top of the fact that Russia already has a suitable lifting body (and has another in development nearing completion). (I'm no rocket scientist -- can anybody here elaborate on the advantages/disadvantages of the two designs?)

    --
    -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
  2. Re:Possible Reason by Dr_LHA · · Score: 3, Informative

    I know your post is marked "Funny", but I wonder why you have this opinion that ESA is such a failure? ESA has had extremely high success with many of its missions, and probably has a similar if not better hit rate than NASA.

    I'm speaking as someone who currently works on a NASA mission here.