Russia ready to take lead on space station

A new shuttle?
Medvedchikov even suggested that at some future point, if required, the Russians could restart their "Buran" shuttle program. With an external appearance amazingly similar to the U.S. shuttle, Buran made one successful orbital flight without a crew in late 1988. The program then collapsed during the severe budget crunch that accompanied the transition from the Soviet Union to Russia.

"If tasks emerge which this system would be capable of fulfilling, then I think it would be possible to revive this project," he said. "In my view, this system is significantly better than the [U.S.] shuttle, because the shuttle can only work in conjunction with a specific booster.”

Medvedchikov claimed that “the thinking behind the Energiya-Buran project is far more practical. The Energiya booster rocket and the Buran space shuttle are independent of each other," and the components could fly on separate missions.

The project was unjustified in the 1980s, he said. "We developed this system somewhat prematurely. It was ahead of its time, since at that time there were simply no large-scale objectives to be tackled with this kind of system."

“The U.S. is not going to make endless use of its shuttles,” Medvedchikov said. “They are a costly affair and too old at that.”

As for NASA's planned next-generation crew vehicle, Medvedchikov said its role in supporting the international space station was unclear. “I don't know if it is going to be fit for missions to the ISS or something else but, hopefully, everything will be thought and weighted out."

Landing on air
An often-neglected advantage of a large shuttle vehicle, whether the NASA design or the Buran, is that the voluminous payload bay means it can not just carry large objects into space, but return them to Earth as well. For returning re-usable cargo canisters such as the Italian-built Raffaello module, or for large items of unique hardware that are cheaper to refurbish than to rebuild from scratch, this capability can be critical. In fact, future space station operations plans were based on it.

But the station's European partners had long chaffed at NASA’s constraints and high costs for bringing any cargo back from space. So about eight years ago they quietly contracted with a Russian space corporation to develop and test a cargo-return system based on a revolutionary "inflatable heat shield" concept. Pressurized by nitrogen gas, a shuttlecock-shaped cone lined with heat-resistant fabric is deployed around the payload as it hits the upper atmosphere.

Their first design involved cargo of only a few hundred pounds, but they realized from the beginning that the technology could be vastly upsized. One direction could build emergency vehicles for crew bail-out from a crippled station, while other advances would make a system that could safely bring back modules of 10,000 to 20,000 pounds. This would completely replace the down-cargo services of a shuttle-class vehicle, at a fraction of the price but at the cost of a somewhat rougher landing.

Sometime in July, this European-funded space vehicle is slated for a new space test. The payload is already on a rocket being loaded on a Russian missile submarine, next to the rocket carrying the much-better-known Cosmos-1 solar sail. A few weeks after the solar sail is launched, the second rocket will hurl the Demonstrator-2B into space for a literal trial by fire.

A previous flight test in 1999 showed promise when the system was properly deployed, but two later missions on cut-rated decommissioned military missiles were frustrated by booster failures. That’s what happened to Demonstrator-1 and Demonstrator-2A, hence the "2B" designation.

But even if this test is less than a success, the development effort will continue. Together with the new Kliper and Parom vehicles, and perhaps later even a resurrected Buran, the inflatable design will provide Russia and its European partners with an impressively enhanced space infrastructure at precisely the time the space station will be looking for a new master.

MORE FROM SPACE

Space Section Front

Satellite designed to spot asteroid Armageddon Cosmic Log: Rockets boosted by fashion Mars lander pulls all-nighter A star explodes in the sky, but nobody sees it ... Solar systems like ours may be rare Dwarf planet named for Polynesian god Shooting stars on tap for summer Probe sends alien’s-eye view of Earth   See the cosmos on your computer Test your science and space smarts Space Section Front   Add Space headlines to your news reader: