Russia to build new spacecraft

Russia to build new spacecraft
Tuesday, February 17, 2004 Posted: 8:23 AM EST (1323 GMT)


MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- Russian engineers have begun design work on a
new spacecraft that would be twice as big and spacious as the existing
Soyuz crew capsules, the nation's top space official said Tuesday.

The new craft will be able to carry at least six cosmonauts and have a
reusable crew section, Russian Aerospace Agency director Yuri Koptev
said at a news conference. Soyuz carries three cosmonauts and isn't
reusable.

The spacecraft, designed by the RKK Energiya company, will have a
takeoff weight of 12-14 metric tons (13-15 tons) -- about twice as
much as the Soyuz, which was developed in the late 1960s.

Energiya has also proposed developing a new booster rocket based on
its Soyuz booster to carry the new spacecraft to orbit.

Koptev wouldn't say how long it could take to build the spacecraft or
how much it would cost, but said that Energiya had done a lot of work
on the new vehicle already.

"It has already reached a serious project stage while the Americans
are only talking about their spacecraft," Koptev said, referring to
U.S. plans to build a new spacecraft.

U.S. President George W. Bush's plan of returning astronauts to the
moon and flying to Mars and beyond envisages phasing out the shuttle
in 2010 and building a new spacecraft, called the Crew Exploration
Vehicle, which is set to make its first manned mission no later than
2014.

Koptev said that his agency was willing to consider possible
participation in the planned U.S. moon and Mars missions, but hadn't
yet received any formal proposals from NASA. At the same time, he
reaffirmed his skepticism about Bush's space plan, saying that the
U.S. administration would have trouble raising resources for the
planned missions.

"There is no explanation whatsoever where the money needed to
implement the declared program would come from," Koptev said.

He added that more robotic missions to moon and Mars could be useful
but sending humans there seemed too costly and inefficient for now.

"It's necessary to switch from emotions to pragmatic assessment: how
much it would cost, where the money would come from and what we would
get from such manned missions," Koptev said.

Koptev said that the prospective Russian spacecraft would be intended
for orbital flights, not moon missions.

He said that Russia and other partners in the 16-nation International
Space Station were waiting for the United States to clarify how the
orbiting outpost would be run after 2010 when U.S. space shuttles will
retire.

Koptev said that Russia would be willing to offer its Soyuz spacecraft
to ferry astronauts to and from the station after the U.S. shuttles
retire, but that would require renegotiating the original documents on
the station.

Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft have served as the only link to
the station since the U.S. shuttle fleet was grounded pending
investigation into the destruction of the shuttle Columbia during its
return to Earth in February 2003.

Koptev said that his agency has enough funds to send the two Soyuz and
two Progress spacecraft necessary to operate the station this year. He
said that Russian and European space officials are currently
negotiating the possibility of sending a European astronaut on a
six-month mission to the station in a Soyuz.

Several European astronauts so far have flown only weeklong missions
to the station.