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."

Comments

Space Shuttle

[cd-w]

The United States beat the Soviet Union in developing multiple-use Space Shuttle rockets, which form its current fleet of manned spacecraft.

... and we now know what a big mistake that was:

• Limited to low-earth orbit.
• Vulnerable to damage on launch.
• Over-complex tile-based heat shield.
• Very expensive to launch.
• No launch escape system.
• Not actually very reusable at all.

intentionally competitive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which areas is Russia UN-intentionally competitive?

"Comrade, production is too high! You must reduce performance to the planned levels or we will succeed."

Re:rockets vs shuttle

[SamP2]

yeah wow so the rocket is cheaper... pity it carries a fraction of the shuttles payload

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.

Re:rockets vs shuttle

[jamstar7]

Shuttle carries 26.8 tons into LEO. NASA was budgetted $368 million per launch in 2001, but it actually takes about $450 million.

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.

Russia wins the spam gap too

[AHumbleOpinion]

In which areas is Russia unintentionally competitive exactly?

Spam comes to mind.

Revisionists unleashed!

[dbIII]

The shuttle was nothing but an attempt to appease the moronic treehuggers

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.

Re:Revisionists unleashed!

[mbone]

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.

Re:Practical Space Access

[grumbel]

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.

NASA Space Pen urban legend

[TimSSG]

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/613/1

The Million Dollar Space Pen Myth is just that, a myth. The pens never cost a lot of money and were not developed by wasteful bureaucrats or overactive NASA engineers. The real story of the Space Pen is less interesting than the myth, but in many ways more inspiring. It is not a story of NASA bureaucrats versus simplistic Russians, but a story of a clever capitalist who built a superior product and conducted some innovative marketing. That story, however, is a little harder to sell to a public that believes what it wants to believe. Tim S

Re:The Space Race is a Rich Nation's Game

[Cyberax]

You do realize that Russian space program is mostly self-financing in the first place? You know, people pay money to launch commercial satellites.

Besides, Russian economy is much bigger than Polish - so $10000000 for space program take less than $1 from each citizen.

GDP per capita is very misleading: Luxembourg currently leads with $81511 (against measly $43223 in USA). So should USA just stop all scientific programs and channel all money to welfare?