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cosmonautics | in brief FSA Chief on prospects of Russian space exploration The head of the Federal Space Agency, Anatoly Perminov, has held several news conferences over the recent months, in which he shared with the media his vision of the state and future of the Russian space exploration industry. According to the FSA chief, Russia will have orbited six more spacecraft of the GLONASS satellite navigation system that is to start serving Russian users already in 2007 and provide global coverage by late 2009. According to Anatoly Perminov, the Russian constellation will have numbered 103 spacecraft, and its status has improved considerably since 2004 with the number of improve navsats having hiked from 25 per cent in 2004 to 60 per cent at present. The FSA head said the space companies’ net income had tripled over the past three years, with their earning capacity having more than doubled. “There remained only seven loss-making companies out of the 103. The annual salary growth in the industry is 25 percent,” Perminov said. Dwelling on the future of manned flight in space, he remarked that the Clipper reusable spacecraft had not been approved by a scientific and technical council. “Scientists believes that another stage of developing an advanced manned transport space system should be the deriving of a spacecraft from an existing design”. According to Perminov, in the world there is “an aerospace-plane programme graveyard: there were eight to 12 such spacecraft under development. Unfortunately, none of the programmes, except the US Space Shuttle, has succeeded”. The chief of FSA thinks that an advanced Russian manned system will have been developed by 2015, and by 2020 with the ISS to wrap up its operation, there will have been a new-type Russian space station in orbit to be used for inorbit assembly of spacecraft for 46 lunar and other planetary missions. Anatoly Perminov did not rule out foreign participation in developing such a station. Construction of the new orbital ‘base’ is now part of the medium-term Russian space exploration programme for the period until 2025. The FSA leader specified that the agency was not going to pull out from the Baikonur space launch facility in the near future. Responding to the question whether there is a chill in the Russian- Kazakh joint space operations, he said, “The idea is outlandish”. Perminov sad he had had talks with Talgat Musabayev, head of Kazakhstan’s space agency. “We have got no problems, and more than 40 agreements on joint work have been signed”, he maintained, saying that recurring minor disagreements and technical issues are settled in the regular course of work. “I see no alternative to Kazakhstan as far as manned space flights are concerned,” the FSA boss concluded. Speaking about plans to explore the Moon and Mars, Anatoly Perminov said that they should have a scientific base and “one should not stoop to resort to adventurism”. In his opinion, the cost of sending a manned spacecraft to the Mars is estimated at $40–50 billions. “Russia’s budget would, probably, survive that, but FSA’s coffers cannot”, he added. Nonetheless, Perminov specified, “We have come up with proposals for space exploration for the period until 2040. The proposals cover all aspects, including lunar and Martian missions. Now we have to obtain relevant financial and material resources”. The proposals cover several fields, particularly, further use of near-Earth space, development of the Moon and a flight to Mars. Readiness for landing on the Moon is to be achieved by 2025, a lunar base is to be set up between 2027 and 2035 and a mission to Mars is slated for 2035 or later. According to Anatoly Perminov, FSA has not decided yet on the location for a new space launch centre. “If we develop an advanced manned spacecraft, e.g. for Moon missions, it will need an advanced launch vehicle that needs a new launch pad. Where the latter should be built remains undecided yet, but I think we should consider not only Baikonur to this end, but the territory of Russia as well”, Perminov said. “No matter where we start [construction of a new launch pad], we have to start from scratch. It is a very difficult thing to do in economic and technological terms. Still, it is doable”. Touching on international cooperation, FSA’s chief noted that cooperation with other countries has surged recently. The agency cooperates with 38 countries. Perminov noted, among other things, that “good relations with Arab countries are evolving” as far as remote Earth sensing, space communications systems and manned flight programmes are concerned. Commenting the South Korean launch vehicle development programme and construction of a launch centre in the Republic of Korea, Anatoly Perminov said relevant agreements had been reached and contracts signed and Khrunichev would roll up its sleeves in late 2007. “Essentially, Russia is offering one stage and the launch complex. Full-scale work is to begin in 2008, and the first flight under programme may take place in 2009”, he added. As to a first Russian space tourist planned to fly to the ISS in 2009, Anatoly Perminov said he would be a businessman turned politician. FSA’s chief decline to name the man, citing the cosmonaut candidate’s personal request of anonymity for a while. Commenting on rumours of the feasibility of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s space flight, Perminov denied any FSA plans to this end, “I do not think it is serious. We have not planned any thing of the kind, let alone doing it for the president. The matter is not on the agenda. I guess the President has enough places to visit and enough work to do”. take-off november 2007 www.take-off.ru
Igor Afanasyev Latest space rocket designs at MAKS 2007 By tradition, space rocket hardware became a key element of the MAKS 2007 air show. Truth be told, there were not too many truly advanced designs. For instance, the Makeyev design bureau displayed a mockup of the reusable space rocket system dubbed Rossiyanka. The project, no doubt, became a rocket sensation of the air show. The system, which designed under the 2006–15 Federal Space Programme, resulted from the cooperation among Makeyev, KBKhA, KBKhM, NIIMash (Nizhnyaya Salda), NPOA and KBTM. Under the federal programme, the partially reusable booster rocket is to insert 25–35t spacecraft into low orbit while slashing the specific launch cost by 1.5 times and reducing the number of fallout areas by far. The Rossiyanka features a multi-unit first stage comprising four 4.1m-dia. tanks arranged around the tail section and interstage adapter; return of the first stage to the launch site along a ballistic trajectory and vertical parachuteless landing by means of the sustainer and www.take-off.ru control engines; and liquefied natural gas (LNG) or methane (which makes up 90 per cent of LNG) to be burnt as fuel. Measuring 35.6 m long, the rocket has a launch weight of 750 t and carries a payload of 21.5 t. The first stage can be used 25 times. The carrier’s lifting capacity could be increased to 35 t by increasing its size or using an oxyhydrogen second stage, while retaining the system’s layout and returnability of its first stage. KBKhA is developing single-type sustainers (210 t of thrust in the first stage and 240 t in the second one), KBKhM and KBKhA are co-developing 11t control engines and NIIMash handles the development of attitude engines. The total cost of Rossiyanka’s development is estimated $670–750 million, and the launch cost is to be within $19 million. The LV will be able to blast off from the Kapustin Yar or Baikonur launch sites. In the latter case, the Energia launch vehicle’s ground infrastructure may be used. The wingless variant of the Clipper manned craft mounted on the mockup to simulate the payload came as a surprise, because the Clipper’s future remains hazy. The Makeyev design bureau’s exposition also included a mockup of a new rocket for the Air Launch system. Unlike the previous configuration, its stages have the same diameter – 2.66 m. The solution stems from the striving for using the Bloc E’s (third stage of the Soyuz carrier) production tooling available at the Progress plant in Samara. The public at MAKS could see a mockup of the ‘old’ launch vehicle of the Shtil family – a submarine-launched ballistic missile derivative. Khrunichev displayed mockups of the Angara and Proton LV families, long known by experts and space exploration enthusiasts. However, they included novelties as well, e.g. the Angara-5P two-stage LV designed for inserting the manned system Khrunichev is developing based on its TKS manned spacecraft expertise, and as many as three different versions of the Angara-1 light launch vehicle. TsSKB-Progress from Samara unveiled its R-7 family rocket mockups – the Soyuz-2-1b, Soyuz-2-3 and 16–17t-capable Soyuz-2-3. While the first two are known, the third one became the second sensation after the Rossiyanka. Some data on the rocket have been circulating for a cosmonautics | in brief Igor Afanasyev while, but the general look and basic characteristics of the future launch vehicle were unveiled during MAKS 2007. Despite the Soyuz-2-3 designation shared with the baseline model, the third variant is radically different rocket featuring enlarged strap-on boosters to house NK-33-1 engines, just like the central booster will. To carry manned spacecraft, the third stage is to be powered by the RD-0110 engine. Fitted with the advanced efficient RD-0124, it will haul unmanned spacecraft. The second- and third-stage blocks have the same diameter, due to which the rocket measures roughly the same 46 m despite its launch weight growing up to 481 t. In spate of a considerable difference from other versions, the 17t-capable Soyuz will likely to launch from a modernised launch complex of the Soyuz rocket, if the programme goes ahead, of course. Meanwhile, the future of this interesting rocket, which load ratio exceeds those of the Zenit and Angara, is a big question mark. The Soyuz-2-3 line stems from the Yamal, Aurora/Onega and Yamal-1 designs that were considered in 1997–2004 but have been as far back from being embodied in metal, as they were a decade ago. take-off november 2007 47 Igor Afanasyev
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