Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

EU and Russia Show Off New Lunar Spacecraft Design

Posted by timothy on from the it's-only-a-model dept.

schliz writes "Space flight planners have unveiled a new spaceship design for a joint EU/Russian trip to the Moon. The EU will be building the crew capsule, using technology developed for the automatic cargo system used to supply the International Space Station." First one to link to decent pics (the article has none) wins undying gratitude and a warm feeling inside.

44 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. About time by seeker_1us · · Score: 3, Insightful
    It's been.. what nearly 35 years since we've been to the moon? About time someone (and not the US since the Iraq war has sucked up all our money) went there.

    Interestingly, from TFA it sounds like they will NOT use the separate landing craft approach of Apollo.

    1. Re:About time by Skrapion · · Score: 2, Interesting

      About time someone (and not the US since the Iraq war has sucked up all our money) went there.

      That's funny, if the US has run out of money, how can they afford to stay in Iraq?

      The war is costing $720 million/day. I say they scale that back to $700 million/day and give the rest to NASA. That should be more than enough for them to work with!

      --
      The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
    2. Re:About time by david.given · · Score: 2, Funny

      The war is costing $720 million/day.

      Where do you get your figures from? According to nationalpriorities.org (which given its bias would tend to overestimate, if anything), it 'only' costs $340e6 per day.

      (You may be amused to know that that would pay off my mortgage in slightly more than 30 seconds.)

  2. Links to pics and the BBC article by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here

    --
    "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
    1. Re:Links to pics and the BBC article by I+confirm+I'm+not+a · · Score: 4, Funny

      More pictures here. It's a Slashdot article from Thursday entitled "First Images of Russian-European Manned Spacecraft".

      --
      This is where the serious fun begins.
  3. Undying gratitude?? by conlaw · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'll just settle for the warm feeling, thanks. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/sci_nat_enl_1216739410/html/1.stm

    1. Re:Undying gratitude?? by ben2umbc · · Score: 2, Funny

      mod parent +1 for undying gratitude and warm feelings from swimming in the kiddy pool.

  4. Russia is the pioneer here... by bogaboga · · Score: 4, Informative

    "...The EU will be building the crew capsule, using technology developed for the automatic cargo system used to supply the International Space Station..."

    I thought it is important for Slashdotters to know that when it comes to automatic docking of spacecraft in outer space, Russians have been doing this for decades without much fan fare!

    I just do not understand why we in the west always appear to get "full of it" when it comes to technology issues. Why?

    Even when we 100% relied on the Russian Soyuz technology not many years ago, this fact did not capture headlines in Russia. If it were the other way round, I am sure CNN, ABC and FOX would inundate us with the story as if nothing else mattered.

    1. Re:Russia is the pioneer here... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not so very long ago -- though it has been a few years -- the U.S. had to take over and dock Apollo and Soyuz capsules that were scheduled to be docked by the Russians, because the Russian equipment failed to handle the job. The Russians tried for like 2 hours, and could not get the two capsules to meet up within tolerance. The U.S. crew took over with the American equipment, and the job was done in 10 minutes.

      Nothing against the Russians, but their technology is still not a match for our own. Even though that was some years back, that is still simply a fact.

    2. Re:Russia is the pioneer here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Last time i checked Russian rockets and space capsules didn't explode on take off or re entry killing all the astronauts. Might want to reconsider what you just said.

    3. Re:Russia is the pioneer here... by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nor is their lift capability anywhere near ours.

      Sort of like saying "My bicycle never careens into a wall at 100mph killing everybody riding it".

      The Soyuz module with a crew of 3 delivers about 1 ton of cargo. The Shuttle with a crew of 7 can deliver 57 tons of cargo. That means a Soyuz rocket would have to make 57 trips to do what the shuttle does in one. Something tells me even with a 2% failure rate for the shuttle I would say it out performs the soyuz. Unless your metric is number of millionaires launched into LEO.

    4. Re:Russia is the pioneer here... by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sorry I'm calling bullshit on myself. It's too late.

      Divide Shuttle numbers by 2 I was operating on a nice easy 1000 pounds to a ton.

      Shuttle can take about 25 tons into LEO with 7 crew members and the Soyuz can take much less than a ton with 3 crew members.

    5. Re:Russia is the pioneer here... by Rakishi · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well they do explode on takeoff sometimes and they do fail almost catastrophically on reentry even more often. They however have a simple enough design that allows for enough safety features/margins to not kill the crew in the process. Some of the crew may get permanent injuries and never fly again (from the G forces) but they live.

    6. Re:Russia is the pioneer here... by Thagg · · Score: 4, Informative

      You know -- sadly what you are referring to was the Apollo-Soyuz mission of the mid 80's. The Russian KURS automated docking system is used all the time on the space station now, and it has worked flawlessly every time.

      It also worked perfectly on the Mir. They did have a docking mishap on the Mir, but that as when they tried to do a manual docking.

      Thad

      --
      I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
    7. Re:Russia is the pioneer here... by S-100 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Flawlessly? It almost destroyed the ISS in October, 2004. The automatic system unexpectedly accelerated the Soyuz TMA toward the ISS and the only thing that saved the ships was disabling the automatic docking system and taking manual control.

      And lest you think manual docking is safe, don't forget the incident where an ISS crewman took manual control of the docking of a Russian cargo ship and ended up smashing it into the station, fortunately at low enough delta-v to cause only superficial damage.

    8. Re:Russia is the pioneer here... by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why does cargo need babysitting? Use the Progress resupply vehicle - no human lives to endanger while delivering new toilet roll to the ISS.

    9. Re:Russia is the pioneer here... by meringuoid · · Score: 2, Informative
      what you are referring to was the Apollo-Soyuz mission of the mid 80's

      1975, actually, the last American flight until the first Space Shuttle launch in 1981.

      --
      Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
    10. Re:Russia is the pioneer here... by david.given · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The Soyuz module with a crew of 3 delivers about 1 ton of cargo. The Shuttle with a crew of 7 can deliver 57 tons of cargo.

      24 tonnes to LEO, actually. And if you want to lift cargo, you're hardly going to use a Soyuz. Use a properly designed heavy-lifter instead, such as a Proton or an Ariane 5, and launch your astronauts seperately in a Soyuz; that way you don't have to man-rate your heavylifter, which saves you vast amounts of money. The Shuttle's main problem is that it's designed to be a man-rated lifter and a cargo heavylifter and an on-orbit habitation module and a heavy cargo return vehicle and an aeroplane, which means it does everything badly rather than doing one thing well.

    11. Re:Russia is the pioneer here... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative

      *sigh* The AC above me was trying to link to the List of Space Disasters article on Wikipedia. Which speaks of two major incidents resulting in the loss of crew. The first was a parachute failure which led to the death of the astronaut on board. The second was a valve failure that resulted in depressurization of the capsule and a loss of all crew members.

      Score Card
      ==========
      Russia - 2
      U.S. - 2

      Seems to be a parity to me. Also, there is the issue that the Soviet Union didn't always tell everyone when an accident happened. It's difficult to tell if there were further incidents that have gone unpublished.

      Regardless of that issue, there are more than enough near-fatal space accidents on the Russian side listed in the Wikipedia article to question whether the Russian space program really is safer. The truth is simply that space travel is risky business. It will continue to be risky business for a long time, unfortunately.

      --
      Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
    12. Re:Russia is the pioneer here... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That's only fair if you also include the Russian deaths on the ground. Who had the dubious honor of having the first space-related death? Why, the Russians with a training exercise in a pure oxygen environment. (Same issue that killed the Apollo astronauts.) Except that was 1961. Apollo wouldn't repeat that mistake until 1967. (Which was a perfectly avoidable mistake, and was a huge wake-up call to the NASA of the time.)

      Don't even get me started on the number of near-fatal collisions and separation failures the Russians had in space! All of which is nicely spelled out in the same Wikipedia article.

      I REPEAT. Space is dangerous business. Get over this idea that the Russians are inherently safe and the U.S. isn't. They're both as dangerous as you can possibly get. The different approaches to safety primarily yield different modes of failure rather than a superior safety record.

      --
      Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  5. capsule by fragbait · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7519723.stm

  6. Space Unity by inKubus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well, large joint missions to space tend to inspire unity in disparate peoples. I think it's great that East and West are working with one another to see the moon again. And I was thinking that we in America really need to rethink our economic system to work when we're all just getting what we need, rather than what we want. Really, even with prices rising, everything is as cheap if not cheaper than it's ever been in history. And not just in America but world-wide. A family of four can eat like kings in America for under $200 a month, which is only 11 percent of their annual income (at the povery line, 20,500).

    We could easily go to the moon again. Things cost much less than the estimates when people actually care. That's the thing about the past 30 years, and especially the past decade in America. We all knew that we were going to work and really producing nothing meaningful. Perhaps we might do some sort of creative service, but were we really fulfilling any useful cause? NO! And it was all for selfish reasons. A COLLECTIVE goal, like space travel, inspires people to do more work than what they are paid for. That means more productivity and a lower overall cost for the same work.

    In fact, why not OPEN SOURCE the entire lunar thing to colleges and universities, high schools, geeks everywhere. Using version control systems you could allow everyone to put in a patch, and of course it would all be reviewed before anythign was built but why not? The real problem with space travel in America is NASA, because they are so convinced they are the only people who know how to do it. But guess what, it's all old military people mostly (there's some good science, I'm not going to deny that) in the administration, a vestige of the cold war. It's still run like a branch of the military, and the contractors know how to exploit that for maximum profit. What we need is the contractors to ACTUALLY COMPETE, rather than consolidate. We need people to actually care, to bill 10 hours and put in 20, not MILK THE SYSTEM. Actually care about what you're building.

    That goes beyond space, to the country itself. It's a radical idea, actually caring. Don't wait for someone else to do it for you. And be persistent.

    --
    Cool! Amazing Toys.
    1. Re:Space Unity by inKubus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      People simply working for a common goal is "Communism"? EVERY great advance in history is a result of people sacrificing for a common goal. Take the Manhattan project, as a for instance. The inspiration, in this case, was a horrible war. Why, if someone mentions the mere possibility of doing something together, NOT because of a war, but because we're HUMANS and WE CAN, it's branded as "communism"? That couldn't be further from the truth. Your mindset is the result of brainwashing by the people who REALLY benefit from the so called free market. There isn't a free market here anymore.

      I call for a FREER market, where anyone who is willing or able can contribute, rather than sitting on our thumbs and watching our tax dollars flow into the pockets of the space oligarchy. History only proves what HAS happened, not what can. Free society works because people are rewarded for merit. What I'm saying is that people are discouraged because they are NOT being fairly rewarded for their merit. And a collective success, for all humanity, would be a mental reward, a turning point in human history. For money, yes, but also for everyone's livelyhood.

      We sit at a time where the basic necessities in life, WORLD-WIDE are less expensive in time and energy than ever before in history. The reason for this is technology. We HAVE time, especially in America, to spend thinking about the greater goals of humanity because we don't have to spend all of our time worrying about food, shelter, medicine, etc. This is a direct result of the free market, not because we all decided to collectively create a better standard of living. A FEW men, GREAT men, made these things possible through their hard work and ingenuity.

      The competing and crawling we are all doing now is simply to make more waste, not produce anything. To get more luxuries that are basically made by robots nowadays. And so people are discouraged. They are not seeing anything INSPIRING anymore.

      So there are two ways to go about it. Rally everyone around their fears, their unseen enemies, their negative emotions OR rally everyone around their hopes, dreams of peace for all, their positive emotions. That is not COMMUNISM. That's humanism at it's finest. Capital, human capital, money, rewards for those who succeed; these are all essential to the goals of humankind because you're right--people want to compete. But will it be a friendly game or a war? It seems to me that you have given in to the dark side, and no longer recognize that we--as humans--are all one, stuck on this planet with nowhere to run except together. In the melting pot that is America, there is no greater concept.

      So, why don't you stop looking at the past and start looking at the future and stop giving in to your fears (which were probably created by some newspaper anyway)?

      --
      Cool! Amazing Toys.
    2. Re:Space Unity by spandex_panda · · Score: 4, Insightful

      you been watching that Enron movie? Geez some of those Americans are nasty bastards... De-regulation killed folks. European Union type regulation seems much more equitable and 'free' than American 'freedoms'.

      --
      like phosphorescent desert buttons singing one familiar song
    3. Re:Space Unity by sumdumass · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Deregulation of what killed who?

      I hope your not talking about Enron. It wasn't deregulation there. Enron was manipulating prices and scamming the system in ways that were already illegal. The so called deregulation in California which was only partial deregulation only exposed Enron's illegal activities and caused the bankruptcy.

      The EU type of regulation costs on average of 30% more to the consumer then American energy does before you add in taxes depending on where in the Eu you are. Average costs can be compared here. And yes, that is in US dollars already adjusted for the week dollar. Notice how the average in the US is 10.4 cents per Kilowatthour and England is 18.6 cents. Denmark doesn't have a 2006 listing but in 2005, it was 29.5 cents compare to 9.5 cents in the US. France seems to be a little better with 14.4 cents in 2006. Now, consider that on top of this rate, there is a 5% vat tax added on and then normal government taxes. Plus there are tariffs designed to combat global warming that add costs. Although I think most of the tariffs are voluntary at this state.

      These numbers only go to 2006 and in some cases, just 2004. If you think they are doing something better, I suggest you look again. Their rates went up again because of "global warming" measures and to get them in compliance with Kyoto accords and all. In 2005, Germany was paying and average of 21.2 cents per Kilowatthour and their rates supposedly jumped 25% in order to implement a solar program because of global warming. If my math works correctly, that should put them around 26.5 cents now.

      Now of course those numbers are the average for the country and some areas may be more or less. But the same wisdom holds true for all the countries in order to calculate an average. Imagine going from 10.4 cents to Frances 14.4 cents averages. That's a 38-39% increase automatically. My billing last month was for 786 Kilowatt-hours. I actually pay 7.9 cents but lets go with the averageof 10.4 cents. That's around $79.81 for the month at US average rates. If I was paying the France rate of 14.4 cents, I would be paying $110.60 instead. Using the UK's rate, $142.84. Germany ans Denmark respectively would be $162.81 and $226.56.

      As you can see, I wouldn't think their is anything sane with the EU's system. I much prefer my hypothetical average of $79.81 (the actual @ 7.49 cents was $57.52 for the month) over the EU's pricing and controls.

      Have you actually looked at the differences or did someone tell your which is better. Of course if the US starts a carbon trade, we will probably be in the same boat as the EU shortly. And I'm sure the averages have increased somewhat over the last 2 years or so. I'm not looking forward to that at all.

  7. Examples by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 3, Informative

    I do not think any of these are the circumstance to which I referred, but here are a few examples to back up what I say anyway. I believe one of them refers to the same situation as one of the others, but that still makes 3: http://edition.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/11/28/failed.docking/index.html http://www.powerset.com/explore/semhtml/Soyuz_33 http://www.powerset.com/explore/semhtml/Soyuz_T-8?query=Soyuz+33 http://english.people.com.cn/200610/28/eng20061028_315800.html I do not know where you got your information, but the fact is that the United States has always had better docking technology than the Soviet Union. In fact, the Soviets have a rather poor record at it.

  8. Simply not true by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 2, Informative

    Looks to me that my food costs have been about 165% what they were last year, and I don't know about you, but most peoples' paychecks are not 65% higher than they were at this time last year.

    Not to mention gas prices, and other things as well.

    If you call that "as cheap as it has ever been", then if I were you I would pull out my calculator and start re-figuring.

    1. Re:Simply not true by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 2, Funny

      Money is not a precise way to measure the cheapness of things in real life.

      Try telling that to the grocery store clerk.

      If you take the average price and subtract the average raise increase then you have a very very precise way of measuring the cheapness of something.

      In this case the cost is +.5 and the wages are +0 (.5-0)= +.5

      Unless you live in a fairy land costs adjusted for inflation and wage changes is an excellent means of determinig the cheapness of things in real life. Especially when the currency is practically tied to the cost of energy (Joules).

      By your own admission the goverment is causing inflation by printing money. That makes things cost more. Now... if you make $50 a day and the government causes the price of a meal to rise %100 because they're printing more money... but your boss doesn't give you a raise. The prices have risen but you have no more money to spend. I can't fathom any way to explain this except that the price has risen.

    2. Re:Simply not true by inKubus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, but you're not thinking about the big picture. The ACTUAL cost to produce the food, house, clothing item, whatever, in energy and time (human time), is lower than ever in history. Because of the free market, the focus has been on efficiency. Tractors pretty much drive themselves nowadays on the big corporate farms. And they use less energy because their engines are more efficient. I can think of a thousand examples. I generalize it into basically robotics. A robot can give you time, in return for energy. Now we are at a point where a robot can do the work with less energy than a comparable human. Because they are efficently turning energy into pure work, not wasting it playing Gears of War or soemthing.

      What you're seeing is a temporary disruption in the free market because of lack of confidence in the paper we use to exchange. It doesn't change the fact that it is, physically speaking, cheaper. I understand that prices are higher, but the underlying physical concepts that "money" is just an abstraction of have changed for the better, and will continue to do so every year. It's a great leap to make, I understand, but I'm not a crackpot. I'm a scientist.

      --
      Cool! Amazing Toys.
    3. Re:Simply not true by sumdumass · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It isn't the government printing money that is causing inflation. In fact, we aren't printing any more then enough to replace the damaged money anyways. It is the cost of energy that is causing it. You have it right when your said "Especially when the currency is practically tied to the cost of energy (Joules)". Everything from growing things to using electricity to transporting products is going up. That causes prices to increase which gets us to where we are now.

      We have far more money recycled on credit then we have printed. The big problem is that in the late 90's, we removed regulations that were put in place during the 1970's oil crisis and now speculators can buy contracts for oil that have no capabilities whatsoever at all to take delivery of it. This takes oil off the market and causes the spot prices to drop to almost the same amounts as the contract prices. There used to be around a 10-20% differences in prices, this is down to less the 3% in most cases now. Currently it is going at a 42 cent loss. But to give an idea of how much of the market is given to speculation, we were at $147/bbl and dropped to $124 or so on the mention of a government report that we are using less oil. That's about a 15-16% drop all the sudden and it is still shrinking. Now even with this, people are still expecting to make money which means that speculation is still driving the costs to some degree.

      Combine that with low dollar values and poof, there is the problem.

    4. Re:Simply not true by timmarhy · · Score: 2, Insightful
      i get what you are saying but you aren't communicating it that well. what i THINK you mean is that production efficency has gotten better. unfortunately the double edged sword of the free market is that costs have also risen, in part due to us being able to consume raw products so fast.

      what is needed is better economic policy and some smack down on the banks - we have made the mistake of letting too much of our economy rest in their hands.

      --
      If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
  9. Too soon by Mad+Hughagi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We've been there, and picked up enough rocks to last a while. What else is there to do...?

    Until we can build largely self-sustaining colonies and prove them on earth the fuel and resources would be better spent launching probes, satellites, telescopes, etc. - not sending people on moon vacations.

    --
    UBU
    1. Re:Too soon by mpeskett · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Baby steps, if we want to go on to bigger and better things then we need to build up some momentum... get the space programme rolling, inspire some more public interest in space, test the technology out and etc.

      Plus it can only help the people running the show to do a few relatively simple missions before trying anything ambitious.

    2. Re:Too soon by Original+Replica · · Score: 2, Interesting

      We've been there, and picked up enough rocks to last a while. What else is there to do...?

      We could start gathering/refining He3. It shows a lot of promise as a fuel source.
      We could use the moon as a last refining step to the habitat equipment we plan on sending to Mars.
      Let us not forget the real reason we went the first time: Prestige. We could use a bit of that right now, sure it would be better to improve America's reputation by once again being a leader in Human Rights, education, and freedom; but with our international street cred this low we should take what boosts we can get.

      --
      We are all just people.
    3. Re:Too soon by tftp · · Score: 3, Informative

      The lunar soil contains He(3) in 0.01 ppm concentration. If you want one gram of He(3) you need to excavate, process and dispose of 100 tons of regolith. This one gram will yield about 200 MW*h (per your link to Wikipedia.) This is also 272,000 hp*h which amounts to 1,000 hours of work of one machine with 272 horsepower engine. I am very much unsure if this budget is even enough to dig up and carry all this regolith to the processing plant - which also needs energy, which has to be taken from the mining allocation. So there is a good chance that use of He(3) on the Moon is cash-negative.

  10. Re:If Kings Eat Nothing But Steamed Rice by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've worked with a large aerospace company's Advanced Research Group before. There is a LOT of waste involved. You will have no argument from me on that one. It's largely a question of management though not inspiration. They were all really excited about what they were doing... but completely lacking in focus. The Manhattan project succeeded because it had incredible leadership and a very clear directive. The amazing leadership directed a large number of theoretical scientists to focus their efforts on practical applications.

    If you know what you want and you actually work towards it you can save a lot of money. It's vague, objectiveness directives which often result in slow progress. That's the problem with the open source movement now. Designing by committee is spectacularly wasteful because everything gets reinvented 10 times. Ubuntu is bringing focus and progress to desktop linux by actually providing leadership.

    If you want to talk pure time/energy/efficiency open source development of a rocket is infinitely more wasteful than a handful of brilliant engineers working while all of those open source contributors sat on bicycles and powered generators.

  11. Re:If Kings Eat Nothing But Steamed Rice by inKubus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's sort of what I'm talking about. Perhaps not doing actual calculations and stuff. People could contribute in any way they could. Some people might just make a logo for the craft, others might help write some code.

    I understand what you're saying; there's a lot of space travel that can't be done by ordinary people, and bringing those extraordinary people together safely is expensive. But there is a vast untapped reserve of undiscovered genius in this country, who don't think they will ever get a chance to change the world, or discover new things outside the planet, and that's a real shame. When there's more interest in basically anesthesizing yourself with drugs than contributing to a better future, it's a sign of a society's failure. History HAS shown that, although I'm not a fan of history. I see this apathy everywhere I go. Maybe I'm crazy but I think people want to be inspired, and for as long as anyone can remember we haven't been. Or if we have, it's about stupid war stuff and not something positive.

    --
    Cool! Amazing Toys.
  12. Paradox by ndnspongebob · · Score: 2, Informative

    Fact of the matter is, we live in a paradox, we compete for money, but also for technology, and power, it is all a competition. We hurt each other for it and the sense of having everyone work together is the highest ideal that we try to work through laws, but it just isn't the case because certain people want to be "better" than other people by having more material possessions and the social status that accompanies it. Why do we have money that separates us? the same reason we have achievement on xbox360 and trophies on ps3 and why we have different levels of degrees in college. In the end, just look in the mirror, although we do incredible things, we are from a family of monkeys but we are too proud to admit it.

  13. Link to further discussion of this vehicle by meringuoid · · Score: 4, Funny

    A popular tech website posted news about this a few days ago; there was a lengthy and interesting discussion: here.

    --
    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
  14. Different times, same reasons by mangu · · Score: 3, Informative

    not the US since the Iraq war has sucked up all our money

    And it would be interesting to note that the US stopped the Apollo moon project in the 1970s in part because the Vietnam war was sucking up all their money.

  15. Soyuz ACTS origin by MRe_nl · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://www.russianspaceweb.com/soyuz_acts_origin.html

    --
    "Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
  16. Aha! It's not the Kliper it's the CSTS! by bihoy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This fact was mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for the Kliper which in turn mentions the Crew Space Transportation System.

  17. Not here by WindBourne · · Score: 2, Interesting
    W. pissed off the russians, but the next president is far more likely to see the advantage of working together. All in all, we have learned things from Russia, and Russia has learned from us, and perhaps more important, the other nations (EU, Japan, Canada) have also learned to work together as well as develop some fo their own tech. When it comes to going to the moon/mars, I see three major efforts.
    1. China; who said originally that long march 5 would be ready in 2014, is now in testing. That alone should be of interest to the West.
    2. America/Russia/EU/Japan/Canada,and will probably Australia and India as well, will join together to pursue the moon and mars.
    3. American private enterprise combined with support from our DOD will hit the moon the soonest.

    The last warrents more explanations. The DOD wants up their before China gets there. They are already dumping money into spacex and bigelow (Spacex is missing launches, but they are there). My guess is that either Armadillo or Blue origin will join the effort for a lunar transport (I think BO will get the nod due to secrecy). I suspect that Spacex will be given a contract shortly after falcon 9 flies to build the BFR. I would further guess that the initial RD will be done elsewhere perhaps even Kwajalein. These folks will be going there before 2016.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  18. Re:Looks to me like another space race by fastest+fascist · · Score: 2, Informative

    There's only going to be a space race if there's a political reason to have one.