Note that the mass for the reworked Soyuz heat shield is no more than 300
kg. Updated details about the Lunar Express SM system are available at:

www.constellationservices.com

but if you can read Russian, there is a very interesting story at:

http://www.kp.ru/daily/23335/31058/

BTW, I would be happy to answer questions about this near term lunar
mission, right here.

DWA


"hop" wrote in message
om...
"Jim Oberg" wrote in message
...
FYI:


A very handsome 50-page brochure (Russian and English) about Progress
M50
and background
can be downloaded in pdf form from
http://www.federalspace.ru/video/Progress_M50_www.pdf

Specific mission details (in Russian) can be read at
http://www.federalspace.ru/Start1Show.asp?STARTID=574

JimO
www.jamesoberg.com
Nice find.

Far more interesting than the fact the ISS crew get magazines and DVDs
to me was the Soyuz LV upgrade timeline. While the aurora/onega stuff
seems likely to be viewgraph engineering, the Soyuz 2A and 2B and
perhaps the Kourou pad seem to be fairly firm. Anyone know if this is
true, or just more 'if we had the money' dreaming ?

Incidently, the Soyouz 2B gives an extra 1000kg to LEO from Baikonur,
which should be plenty for extra heat sheild that the seemingly
implausible CSI http://www.constellationservices.com/ plan would
require. Hmmm...

It is also interesting to see the same LV gets about 2.5x the payload
to geostationary from Kourou compaired Baikonur. That should provide
an attractive option for medium sized GEO sats.