Moscow’s space rocket corporation Energia is developing a hybrid shuttle as an alternative to the future spacecraft Kliper

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

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“We are working on the new craft. The talk is about a spacecraft of a so-called hybrid type. Its concept is a combination of spacecraft of a capsule type (Soyuz) and of a winged one (Buran)/ The goal of making the new ship is to fly to space more safely and reliably,” the corporation’s director-general Vladimir Syromyatnikov told Itar-Tass during celebrations of the 30th anniversary of the Russian-American space mission Soyuz-Apollo. The idea of the new craft is its making most of its flight as a capsule, with wings of the re-entry vehicle folded and protected by heat insulation. During the re-entry into the atmosphere, the heat insulation protector is jettisoned, the wings are deployed and the craft lands like a plane. The new ship will combine the best qualities of Soyuz and Buran. In particular, a compact launch configuration of the capsule craft and compatibility with an emergency rescue system will be used in its design. One of versions of the spacecraft is to have a weight of seven tonnes, which s to allow delivering it into orbit on Soyuz rockets. “As the ship will begin the landing as a capsule and complete it as a plane, this will provide to it a possibility of returning to the earth at a planet escape speed and landing after an inter-planetary flight,” Syromyatnikov said. The project is at a stage of technical proposals. Syromyatnikov led a group of specialists who developed a key unit of the Soyuz-Apollo programme, a docking port. “If the ship that we offer is accepted, it will require a new docking unit,” he said.

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