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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."

6 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. ESA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    In Soviet Russia, ESA funds you.

  2. 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?)

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    -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
    1. Re:rtfa by Rakishi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I am in general a bit weary of Russian designs, especially now that they're low on funding. Look at the Soyuz, darn thing seems to be able to survive anything and get it's occupants down alive. That would be a good thing if hadn't had to use those large margins multiple times already. In other words a good design yet lacking in implementation and attention to details. Granted the newest revision seems to be working problem free or close to it. I'd still trust the Russians over anything NASA builds in this area, by a large margin.

      Personally I find the Kliper design very interesting, at least the newest one. You have a very good safety mechanism like the Soyuz, where launch failures don't kill the crew. In addition, it's re-usable in all the right ways unlike the shuttle. The crew vehicle is launched separately and is the bare-minimum, meaning that any extra safety margins require the least cost. The parts you don't need to send back to Earth aren't sent back or burned up (ie: everything beyond the bare minimum), so you don't need to send them up over and over.

      In essence: the Kliper does only what it needs to do, get people to and from orbit, without trying to be a jack-of-all-trade/shitty-at-everything. Moving things within orbit is separate, as it should be, and isn't sent up over-and-over. Living and experimentation is yet again separate, maybe they'll finally use the ISS for something.

      The only thing which bothers me is the amount of parts and that some will stay in orbit, which makes things more complicated and introduces potential problems that are hard to deal with.

  3. Response to CEV? by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    How we know is more important than what we know.
  4. Where have I seen this before? by shaneh0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  5. Re:honest question.. by Belseth · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.