credit Flight / caption: Three different versions for the failed Russian tender?
There was no one today (well it is Sunday and the air show officially starts tomorrow) on the stand to talk about these models of the Khrunichev Space Center piloted space complex (see second picture in the extended portion of this blog post for vehicle data) but Hyperbola does intend to talk to the Russian space company this week so expect more details. Looking at the data and seeing how closely they align with the manned spacecraft tender that the Russian Federal Space Agency published this complex concept design (with Angara 3 identified as its launch system) is probably Khrunichev's failed bid for what is now known as the Advanced Crew Transportation System
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credit Flight
on June 16, 2009 3:26 PM | Reply
All new is good forgotten old - exactly the same scale models already had been presented by Khrunichev on MAKS-2007 and ILA-2008 air shows.
on June 18, 2009 8:21 AM | Reply
Son of TKS, methinks...?
on July 4, 2009 12:27 PM | Reply
BTW, in March of this year Russian tender for a new generation manned space transportation system had been successful (unlike previous attempt in 2006 - cancelled by RKA space agency), hovewer Krunichev bid was not succesfull.
Please note that 3 spacecrafts shown on this foto are not from different bidders (in this year there were only 2 participants: RSC Energia and Khrunichev). Instead, they represent three different configurations of Khrunichev design concept of manned transportation system. However it's a not brand new design - the same models had been presented on international airshows since 2007.
And yes, an unofficial name of TKS-2 had been coined due to a close resemblance with a manned spacecraft TKS from Russian military Alamaz OS program.