Its that time of year again and there’s some interesting items on the Russian Federal Space Agency, aka Roscosmos, website
See pictures here of equipment arriving for the French Guiana Samara Space Center Soyuz rocket launch complex. And here see another picture but this time it is of the public affairs staff of Roscosmos and European launch provider Arianespace. The fella in the middle is Arianespace’s Mario de Lepine. The blurb tells us that the Soyuz will launch from South America in “late 2009”. Best of luck
Of longer term interest is this development in the saga of the reformation of the Soviet space industry. And I mean Soviet. When I was at Star City in 2005 senior officials referred to the Soviet space programme in the present tense. The report suggests the new name for an amalgamation of the multitude of companies that exist could be United Rocket Space Corporation
Perhaps taking its cue from the Russian aviation industry where its unified industrial company is United Aircraft. But be careful there guys, United Spacecraft was the name former NAZI SS major and Apollo programme overseer Wernher von Braun gave to his fictonal spaceflight corporation in his book Project Mars: A technical tale. Not the sort of person Russians want to copy
If you wondered where the Chinese may have got the idea of two Shenzhou docking before they decided to jump to the 2011 Tiangong-1, Shenzhou mission read this
Talking of non-Russians India’s cosmonaut gets a slap on the back from Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and there is a reference to joint manned missions being planned. I hope to get a lot more on this in the coming months
And for something very riveting there is the announcement that a top priority for Russia is satellite remote sensing technology, just kidding
But of the various postings to the agency’s website this meeting that took place today is the most intriguing for me, when it says, “Technologies to appear in these programs will provide the opportunity to deliver cargo to LEO, to orbit spacecraft for commercial purposes. Initially, suborbital missions will be conducted.” [my emphasis in italics]
That meeting was of the International Association of Space Activities Participants (IASP) and the text refers to its public private partnership session. There launch system technology programmes were discussed. The Roscosmos blurb reads and the IASP’s website looks as though it is primarily Russian industry so why it is international is anyone’s guess
Maybe its the just the translator’s punctuation but as a native English speaker I would read that as launch systems for delivering cargo to LEO and then in addition the commercial orbital flights that follow suborbital. Well, that sounds like an approach for space tourism to me
But until then its all cosmonauts and Soyuz spacecraft and if you have ever wondered what cosmonaut training was like, check out these pics. Inspirational…
