RIA Novesti reports that Sberbank has loaned Energia 2.9 billion rubles ($106 million) to allow the company to continue production of the Soyuz and Progress vehicles required for the International Space Station (ISS).
Meanwhile, the news agency says that Kazakhstan will be paying a commercial rate to send a cosmonaut to ISS. “‘The only way a Kazakh astronaut can fly to the ISS is as part of a Russian expedition on a commercial basis for a period of 10 days,’ Talgat Musabayev, head of Kazakhstan’s National Space Agency, was quoted as saying by Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency.”
European and Russian space companies are studying designs for a new crew vehicle for possible launch aboard an Ariane 5, Rob Coppinger reports over on his Hyperbola blog.
The study involves a group of European companies headed by Thales Alenia Space and EADS Astrium that is working with Russia’s Energia and S. P. Korolev. A number of designs are being considered, including one similar to NASA’s Apollo and Orion capsules.
One particularly intriguing aspect is that engineers studied building a lunar version of the Russian Soyuz crew transport. However, they rejected the idea because problems arose with the vehicle’s thermal protection system and other changes required to fly to the moon.
Virginia-based Space Adventures is planning to use a Soyuz variant to fly tourists around the moon. Coppinger’s report raises some interesting questions about just how much modification the vehicle will require and what that might cost.
The Russian News and Information Agency Novosti has an interesting analysis of the country’s space program that indicates Energia may soon unveil a design for a replacement of the venerable Soyuz spacecraft.
“In early February, Vitaly Lopota, the newly appointed Energia CEO, told respected daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta that the R&D effort still continued. He said that the spacecraft design would be unveiled before August and that it would take at least six to seven years to develop a new spacecraft,” Andrei Kislyakov reports.
Kislyakov says that the new design would be an alternative to the winged Kliper vehicle, which was the favored Soyuz replacement until August 2006. Kliper was rejected due to high R&D costs. The three-person Soyuz is now in its fifth decade of service, having first flown in 1967.
