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?
