Russia ready to take lead on space station

Evolution of new space vehicles
Space engineers at the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation, which builds and operates all Russian human space vehicles, have been refining their designs for their follow-on to the Soyuz crew transport vehicle that has, in various models, been the mainstay of Russian cosmonautics for almost 40 years. They have also engaged in a major sales campaign to obtain funding both in Moscow and abroad.

The "Kliper" (as in a "clipper ship") will use a bath-tub shaped lifting-body command module to carry six cosmonauts on a much gentler ride than the Soyuz. It will also have a disposable docking module at its aft end for carrying cargo and linking up with the space station.

Last May, the European Space Agency’s director of human spaceflight, Daniel Sacotte, was quoted in the Russian press as promising partial financing for Kliper from France, Germany, and Italy. Alan Thirkettle, ESA’s head of development for human space flight, told reporters that such cooperation would make Europe relatively independent of American restrictions on flights of European astronauts.

A space tugboat
With the prospects of the Kliper growing brighter, and the expansion of the space station to accommodate a permanent six-person crew, Russian space engineers also realized that their classic space logistics system would be unable to deliver enough cargo.

For more than two years now, with the U.S. shuttle fleet grounded, the space station has been kept supplied by Russian robot space freighters of the "Progress" series. Each one can carry about two and a half tons of cargo, and three or four are launched every year. They follow the same launch-to-docking profile as the manned "Soyuz" vehicles and share most of their control systems.

Last month, Russian space official Nikolay Bryukhanov said that the Progress system would be replaced by a new space transportation system based on an entirely different concept. It will be called "Parom" (Russian for "ferry") and will replace the throwaway Progress model with a reusable space tugboat.

The Parom will be placed in orbit near the space station and then patiently wait for cargo canisters to be launched from Earth. These canisters will not need the complex and expensive control systems of a Progress vehicle; instead, a standard docking interface will allow the Parom to latch onto them as they draw near. The Parom will then use its guidance and propulsion systems to deliver the cargo to the space station.

“Any Russian or foreign launch vehicle can orbit such containers,” Bryukhanov said. “This can be an airtight instrument module or a fuel tanker,” he suggested, or even “an unpressurized platform featuring large scientific equipment and auxiliary systems [such as] solar batteries that cannot be stored inside an airtight module.”

In layout, the Parom will be built around a pressurized transfer passage with docking ports at each end: one to dock to the cargo module, the other to dock to the space station. It will have its own engines, along with propellant transfer lines to feed from the cargo canister into its own tanks or into the space station’s tanks. It will also have engines scaled to handle cargo modules weighing up to 60,000 pounds, twice the mass of the largest station sections carried into orbit aboard space shuttles.

The same space tugboat technique will not only allow expansion and resupply of space stations, he added, but also the assembly of multi-modular vehicles for manned and unmanned flights into deep space. The Parom could also toss payloads into higher Earth orbits, or push waste containers down into the atmosphere for incineration, and then reverse its own course and stay in orbit for its next mission. As needed, it could be serviced by spacewalking cosmonauts based at the space station.

Bryukhanov said he expected that the Parom, which would be rely on a heritage of proven Progress hardware, would be a commercial money-maker within a few years of deployment.

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