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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."
The United States beat the Soviet Union in developing multiple-use Space Shuttle rockets, which form its current fleet of manned spacecraft.
Which areas is Russia UN-intentionally competitive?
"Comrade, production is too high! You must reduce performance to the planned levels or we will succeed."
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.
If they want to be practical about getting to space, the old X-15 program had it down pat. Three vehicles, 200 flights in less than 10 years. One fatal crash. You launched the thing from a plane or a balloon. No waste, no fuss. And because you're not constantly throwing something the size of a young apartment building into orbit, a single accident doesn't effectively knock you out of space for years. It couldn't carry much more than the pilot, but only an idiot would doubt that by the third generation (the original RFP's went out in the mid-50's) it would have carried a reasonable payload.
I think it all started to go wrong for NASA when politicians were allowed to their poke their long, ratlike noses into the business of scientists and engineers. If not for the damned shuttle program, there'd be a crew drinking beer on Mars by now.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Though to be fair, NASA still wins in the ideas department with advanced Saturn models, the NERVA rockets, and especially the completely reusable 500 ton Sea Dragon Rocket (which had a full design study). Hopefully the latter two ideas will be looked at again when the different space agencies consider building a spacecraft to travel to Mars.
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.
In which areas is Russia unintentionally competitive exactly?
Spam comes to mind.
to read Russian space-tech related forums, you'll be pretty sure that Angara is a scam. They won the tender(many years ago) with one design, replaced it later with another (probably the only common thing for both designs is that they're rocket designs) and did nothing to implement either of those designs. This: Russian space officials have said single-use spacecraft like the Soyuz-TM currently used are cheaper and more practical still indicates that Russian space agency has not gone haywire yet, and may be capable of producing something useful in the future, but Angara is very unlikely to be one of those useful things
The Russians need to stay focused on modernizing their economy and political system. Russia still has considerable poverty, and the money wasted on the space race would be better spent on welfare programs and the education system. At the same stage of development, the Japanese did not waste money on either a space race or a massive weapons program.
Unfortunately, the Russians have become obsessed with nationalism since Vladimir Putin came to power. Big, impressive national projects have become more important than simply improving the quality of life for the poorest segments of the population.
The Russians have a lot to learn from the Poles. The latter are not wasting money on either a space race or a massive weapons program.
The most important lesson that the Russians can learn from the West is that the greatness of a nation is not measured by the size of the weaponry or the speed of the space ship. Rather, the greatness is measured by the quality of life for the average person.
The Soviet Union had awesome weapons and space vehicles, yet was the Soviet Union a great nation?
"The United States beat the Soviet Union in developing multiple-use Space Shuttle rockets, which form its current fleet of manned spacecraft."
The United States (together with Europe) have also beaten the Soviet Union in wasting countless billion of dollars on an International Space Station of very limited research value. Basically they just trying to try to stay alive up there and do 30 minutes of research projects per day. The Shuttle is currently also just a pork-barrel project. Those funds need to be spent in different ways (such as next generation planetary rovers).
The Russians have managed to keep their total costs for development and launches lower over the decades, by having at least some sort of "mass production" economies of scale.
Their MIR space station managed to get along for years against increadible odds, for a fraction of NASA money.
The Russians have very good and practical aerospace engineers. This illustrates the difference nicely: during the space race NASA spent money and effort in developing a pen which could work in weightlessness. The russian astronauts instead of pens used pencils in space.
Another attempt to blame a bunch of rare and disorganised hippies with no political power at all at the time for some dubious political decisions mostly about spreading the pork. The shuttle design is most likely a lot older than the poster and "moronic treehuggers" don't even have the political clout to get Kyoto signed now let alone sabotage a space program decades ago.