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Russian Kliper not Funded by ESA
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."
Maybe the ESA was concerned the Kliper would have too high a chance of success, thus ruining their pass project record.
In Soviet Russia, ESA funds you.
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
Seeing as the Kliper has been in development since before Bush took office I think not. The Kliper is a response to the space shuttle not the CEV. The sole reason why the Kliper is expected to be worth the cost is that, unlike the space shuttle, it will actually be highly reusable. This gives it a major advantage over the Soyuz, although I personally think the Soyuz is the "little spacecraft that could" and the RSA should focus on reusing modules of the Soyuz in space instead of letting them burn up in the atmosphere. David Anderman has suggested that spent Soyuz/Progress modules could be used to build a space station at the Moon/Earth L1 point. The RSA recently said they could take paying customers on a trip around the Moon within the next 5 years and that, with sufficient funding, they could land paying customers on the Moon within the next 10. That is, they could land a sufficiently enthusiastic billionair on the Moon before the CEV has even launched. Of course, talk is cheap, but the RSA has proven they have the skill and experience to provide manned space services.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The fastest growing job in the space industry has got to be doing concept drawings.
Ohhhhh yeeeaaaah, we have a surrrrging aerospace industry. Our engineers drew almost 1.2 Trillion--with a T--dollars worth of spaceships, last quarter alone. This is a *10% increase* over the same period last year, where only 1,120,234,323 tons of spaceship were drawn.
Analysts are expecting another great year of spaceship drawing in 2006. Even amid these boom years, some are warning against irrational exuberence. "It may seem crazy now, but we could reach a point where people actually stop responding to concept drawings of spaceships and may want actual spaceships." You be the judge.
ESA is already scheduled to build the ATV, or Autonomous Transfer Vehicle, to haul cargo to and from the ISS. The first, the Jules Verne, should be close to being ready to go as soon as the Space Shuttle can get back to a regular construction schedule and deliver the Columbus module (ESA's lab module). Maybe they are just figuring that they can trade cargo space for a passenger seat or two with the US or Russia, so they don't need a direct stake in a passenger craft.
Oh, Edmund, can it be true? that I hold here, in my mortal hand, a nugget of purest green?
Columbus spent a lot of money trying to find a new trade route to the far east and discovered something far more important, America. The sensible thing might have been to stay home but in the end would have cost Spain countless millions in lost revenue from the find. Bringing back Moon rocks proved that the Moon is rich in Helium 3 that can make large scale fusion possible. With out vast amounts of electricity much of the world would have to go back to candles for light and shadow puppets for entertainment. The technology we have wouldn't exist without pushing the practical limits. Remember a little over a hundred years ago most people were farmers and they plowed with horses. It was just over a hundred years ago that powered flight happened and around a hundred years ago that electricity started to be a common thing in cities, a hundred and fifty years ago it was still largely a curiosity. If science keeps pushing forward what happens in the next hundred years? There was less than seventy years between the first powered flight and landing on the moon. There's beating your dinner over the head with a rock or watching your plasma TV, as a previous poster mentioned, and eating delivered pizza. Since it's impossible to know where the next big break through is coming from it's impossible to pick and choose. The safe bet is to choose knowledge over ignorance. You might be able to live without the TV but remember life span used to average 35 years. I'm nearly 45 and by the standards of a few hundred years ago would be an old man. As it is I'm middle aged and could live past a hundred. Not all science is a waste of money, at times the benefits aren't obvious but they are there.
The Soyuz already exists and can do that, although if they can get the CXV to work it may be cheaper than anything else planned. That is a big if imho, it's an interesting design and that usually means "there are a lot of new things that can and will go wrong" (and with a low-mass/low-cost design the consequences may not be pretty). I'm not sure how much Kliper will cost however it is bound to be a pretty penny, mostly for the rockets which alone cost more than the $20mil that they claim CXV will cost. (which I am also skeptical of). Either way we'll know in 4 to 5 years.
I doubt whatever NASA is planning will compare to either design (CXV or Kliper) however they'll use it anyway. Between needing to convert rockets to something they weren't designed for, designing something they have little experience with, massive bureaucracy and no desire to make something which is useful I doubt the result will be anything but another shuttle-like disaster.
Also, the Shuttle's main job right now is to sit in a hanger. It's main job while flying is two fold from now on:
1) Bring large sections of the ISS to orbit, perform work on the ISS (ie: attach the sections), bring cargo to ISS
2) Bring large experiments/general garbage down to Earth.
Sending people up and down can be done by Soyuz; the Shuttle is usually used because it's being sent up anyway and because otherwise it'd have nothing to do.
"the Russians had been stating the ESA would be supporting the enterprise as well."
which enterprise? SS NX-01? USS NCC-1701? A,B,C,D,E,J?