Roscosmos to develop space plans for orbital missions

The State Space Corporation Roskosmos began to develop a space plan to deliver crews and cargo to the orbital station. This was announced by Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin on the air of radio "Komsomolskaya Pravda".

"Roskosmos and TSNIImash are now starting this work (developing a space plan). This is a very promising topic”, he said.  

According to Rogozin, today "the development of the manned programme is connected with the creation of space plans. The U.S., in particular, is doing such work. "We have an idea for a new manned ship in the interests of the orbital station of the same type," said the head of Roskosmos.

Rogozin reminded that the "Energy-Buran" programme was successfully implemented in the USSR, but the reusable drone Buran was in some sense ahead of its time. "I think if we are talking about a ship that should be created to work in low orbits ... it will probably be necessary to move towards creating a manned reusable ship ... What was created by our great grandfathers was ahead of its time, but now that time is coming," he said.

the Buran programme, as "missile technologies here have not proved to be very good".
He explained that the shuttles and Buran were abandoned, because the mass of the glider was about a hundred tons, the mass of useful cargo delivered into orbit was 10-20 tons. However, in order to lift 20 tons of payload into orbit, it was necessary to pay for 120 tons. For example, the share of payloads on the American shuttle was about 1.3 per cent.

According to the expert, in order to fly effectively into space on Buran you need completely different engines, different principles of motion. "There's no point in repeating the Buran. It makes sense to make the shuttle as light as possible, with good flight characteristics, heat-resistant, which can pass the atmosphere. And a small one for a crew of two”, said the magazine's interlocutor.

He also said that at one time in Russia such shuttle design was provided by Molniya NGO under the Spiral programme. The shuttle itself was made by the MiG Company called MiG-105. However, the programme was shut down.

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