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Russia to Build New Spacecraft by 2020
Tech.Luver passed us the word that Russia is now working on a new generation of spacecraft, presumably to help fuel its renewed space exploration ambitions. The Space-based industry is still one of the few areas in which Russia is intentionally competitive, and they intend to exploit that in the coming years. Even still, the new technologies are not expected to see use until 2020. ""A tender to design a new booster and spaceship has been announced," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Roskosmos chief Anatoly Perminov as saying ... Perminov did not give further details of the tender, but said TsSKB-Progress from the Volga city of Samara is likely to bid with its Soyuz-3 design of spacecraft, as well as Moscow's Khrunichev centre with Angara 3P and Angara 5P. The United States beat the Soviet Union in developing multiple-use Space Shuttle rockets, which form its current fleet of manned spacecraft. Russian space officials have said single-use spacecraft like the Soyuz-TM currently used are cheaper and more practical."
Yes, and you always use a 16-wheeler to drive your kids to school, right?
The vast majority of space launches which currently use the shuttle, transport people or regular vital supplies (food, water, etc) to the ISS. The shuttle was not designed for, and cannot do any missions other than low-earth orbit (ISS, Hubble, etc).
In those cases where you really need large cargo (such as lifting components of the ISS), you can use other rockets, such as Delta V or the upcoming Ares-IV (which, by the way, intends to replace the unreliable shuttle in the first place).
The shuttle was nothing but an attempt to appease the moronic treehuggers by creating the illusion of "recycleable" craft, even though (1) the difference in price between launching a shuttle and a light rocket could pay for reducing emissions in other areas that would bring much greater net benefit to the ecology, and (2) consuming the fuckton of fuel to launch a heavy-ass shuttle that carries two people negates any "cleanliness" achieved by just throwing 75% of the shuttle (boosters go, remember?) instead of the ~95% when rocket goes, capsule comes. In an effort to appease the same treehuggers we were periodically stuck with forced solar panels on rovers instead of nuclear power, which among other things forces our Mars rovers to hibernate through the winter instead of working as usual. Thank God that with New Horizons and further nuclear-powered missions we finally got over the yoke.
The Ariane 5G can lift 17.6 tons into LEO for a cost of about $165 million
While not mentioned in TFA, the Soyuz 3 would be able to put 17.8 tons into LEO. If they can get the price comparable to the Ariane, they'll have a winner.
Don't count the Russians out of the race just yet.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Isn't there that little problem that the X-15 doesn't give you space access? It scratches space a little bit and then it goes back to the ground, just like SpaceShip One. Its a nifty thing, but you can't get into orbit that way, since neither altitude nor velocity are even close to what they should be.
The big space shuttle design flaw (the solid rocket boosters) was driven by a very stupid Air Force mission requirement (single orbit return to base
reconnaissance missions) which to put it mildly was not thought out, and which was not challenged sufficiently by NASA.
At the time, reusable rockets were widely seen in the space establishment as the way to cut the cost of on-orbit delivery. What people hadn't
thought through was the cost of ground support, which is very high for the Shuttle. Even if the Shuttle flight hardware was free, it still wouldn't be economical to operate compared to Soyez. Realistically, as soon as the shuttle launched we should have started designing the next version, taking into account what we had learned from the first attempt. We are now 20+ years behind the curve now, and it shows.