Recently in Soyuz Category

credit: IAF/KARI

So Hyperbola has finally touched down in Daejeon in south Korea, after a scorching reentry from the Oort cloud, or was that just the effect of the Korean spicy Kimchi pickle and the even more spicy red pepper paste, Kochu Chang, they put on most of their food?

Either way it is a countdown now to the start of the 60th International Astronautical Congress and the space agencies' plenary session, so expect pictures and pithy comment from this blog as the week unfolds with everything from grand human exploration visions to suborbital tourism

But it won't end with Hyperbola's Asiana flight out of Seoul next weekend, oh no, the international space theme continues with the AIAA/DLR International hypersonics and spaceplanes conference in Bremen, Germany next week

Hyperbola is launching to the Oort cloud for a week's R&R from today and will be returning via Daejeon, Korea from the 12 October. In Daejeon Hyperbola will be blogging from the International Astronautical Congress, where the world's space community meets. And yes there may even be Virgin Galactic news there...

On Friday 4 September I spoke to former NASA astronaut and Excalibur Almaz (EA) executive vice president for technical operations Leroy Chiao about the commercial orbital tourism venture that is using Soviet developed space vehicles. In the extended portion of this blog post are my notes from that telecon, facts that did not necessarily find their way into either this analysis article about the vehicles in development today or this article about Excalibur Almaz's plans and some comment

credit: Russian Federal Space Agency / caption:  The bullet shape is feintly reminiscent of Kliper

The above image is a cropped screencap from an animation embedded in a Russian Federal Space Agency "tvRoscosmos" webpage. It shows a very different concept, from what has been reported to be the craft, for the planned Advanced Crew Vehicle (ACV) that Russia wants to launch on its new Rus-M rocket in the second half of the next decade

The animation video shows a future Rus-M launch of ACV, also known as Crew Space Transportation System, and it can be found in the extended portion of this blog post

The video follows a surprise slide (see below - cropped again for space) from Roscosmos head Anatoly Perminov's presentation to the 17 June Review of US human spaceflight plans committee meeting that shows a basic capsule and something that looks like the European Space Agency's EXPERT re-entry technology demonstrator.

However Roscosmos has said that no ACV designs will be shown until next year. What makes Hyperbola wonder about this bullet shape design is that a very senior Energia designer and Soviet space programme veteran told it that Kliper had severe subsonic instability. Perhaps they are aiming now for something more like Lockheed Martin's Orbital Space Plane concept


credit: Russian Federal Space Agency / caption: is this accurate at all?

First Briton in space Helen Sharman spoke to Hyperbola after being awarded the first silver astronaut pin by the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) on 3 July 2009. Sharman flew to the Mir space station in May 1991. Called Project Juno the mission had been initiated by London based Moscow Narodny Bank, a subsidiary of the Soviet Union's Vnesheconombanka bank, that thought it could organise private funding to send a foreign citizen to the Mir space station

Deciding to conduct this commercial venture in the UK adverts were placed in 1989 for applicants and over 13,000 were received. Managed by Brunel University's Institute for Bio-Engineering Sharman, a chemist working in the food industry at the time, was selected and with a British Army air corps Major as her backup crew man went through 18 months of cosmonaut training. Launched on Soyuz TM-12 on 18 May her mission lasted eight-days

The BIS also awarded a silver pin to British born US citizen Richard Garriott, the sixth spaceflight participant to go to the International Space Station. Garriott, the son of NASA Skylab and Space Shuttle astronaut Owen Garriott, made his money in the computer game industry. The BIS plans to award British born NASA astronauts Michael Foale, Piers Sellers and Nick Patrick silver pins in the near future 

Despite reports in 1991 and since that Project Juno was a private mission, and even Sharman herself refers to it as a commercial mission, the Soviet bank failed to raise any private financing and the entire mission was paid for by the Soviet government. It went ahead with the approval of then Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev. Hyperbola investigated the background to Juno a while back and spoke to the UK organisers about the realities of Project Juno

Hyperbola recently asked Space Adventures some questions by email about this proposed private Soyuz flight to the International Space Station (ISS). Interestingly although space tourist Richard Garriott, a co-founder of the company, wants to go back to the ISS he told Hyperbola that he did not expect to be one of the customers for the private Soyuz flight; which Flightglobal first reported on in July 2003. Yes that date is 2000 and three

At the Paris air show last month the head of the Russian Federal Space Agency Anatoly Perminov said that Roscosmos would not "abandon space tourism" but he indicated that it would be many years after the September flight of Guy Laliberté before another ISS visit would take place. On the other hand, if Japan's HTV resupply vehicle fails during its mission this September there may need to be a reduction in ISS crew size, at which point Space Adventures is back in business

As you will read below, with a minimum 30 month lead time between ordering the rocket and spacecraft and the mission, to send two tourists to ISS by the end of the latest target date of 2013, a deal has to be done by June 2011. Below and in the extended portion of this blog post are the questions and answers from Space Adventures chief executive Eric Anderson

1 How are you marketing such a mission?

We are discussing the opportunity with various individuals and corporations around the globe.

2 What is the seat price for such a trip? How do you calculate that?

Video games multi-millionaire Richard Garriott, Space Adventures' sixth space tourist and one of the company's co-founders, spoke to Hyperbola at the Royal Aeronautrical Society's 30 June 2009 space tourism event. He followed in his NASA astronaut father's footsteps, Owen Garriott was a scientist astronaut that was a Skylab crew member and participated in a Space Shuttle mission

From 15-17 June Hyperbola will be coming from Le Bourget where the 100th Paris air show will be launching into full swing - and there may even be reportage on breaking news over the weekend (yes I've got to work Saturday and Sunday...). Expect multimedia coverage (when I have the time to upload it) of the space industry that camps out in the Parisian suburb for the first half of next week along with tweets from the European Space Agency and Russian Federal Space Agency press conferences, at least. C'est magnifique!

Utilisez Google traduire, en haut à gauche, à lire le blog au-dessus de l'affichage en français

Go here to find out more about how you can follow all the tweet action from the Flightglobal team working this week at the Le Bourget Paris Salon de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace (that's aeronautics and space to the anglais only readers out there) as the air show is also known

It is a bright and sunny Saturday (13 June) morning here in le Bourget, France where preparations continue for the 100th Paris air show that will see a whole of lot of aeronautics stuff and plenty of European spaceflight industry and agency activity to fill the Hyperbola posts that are to come, hopefully along with some podcasts and video reports


Agrandir le plan