MOSCOW -- Russia's space agency is planning to build a new spaceship with a nuclear engine, its chief said yesterday.
Anatoly Perminov told a government meeting that the preliminary design could be ready by 2012. He said it will then take nine more years and $600 million to build the ship.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev urged the Cabinet to consider providing the necessary funding. "It's a very serious project," Medvedev said. "We need to find the money."
Perminov's ambitious statement contrasted with the state of the Russian space program, and sounded more like a plea for extra government funds than a detailed proposal.
Russia is using 40-year-old Soyuz booster rockets and capsules to send crews to the International Space Station. Development of a replacement rocket and a prospective spaceship with a conventional propellant has dragged on with no end in sight.
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The Russian space agency has mulled over future missions to the moon and Mars, but hasn't set a time frame.
Cool! We may have lost sight of our space program, however they have not lost sight of theirs.
It might be Russia that becomes the exploring Nation of the future. And the US like Portugal during the age of exploration will be in the backwaters of history.
Russia is using 40-year-old Soyuz booster rockets and capsules to send crews to the International Space Station
And how many times has the Soyuz and Progress rockets bailed out NASA and saved the ISS from being a multi-billion dollar boondoggle? Everytime a Shuttle has failed to take off on time or has been grounded, The Russians have picked up the slack and sent crews and supplies to the station at 10% of the Shuttle's cost. When the Shuttles are retired next year It will again be the Russians pulling the weight on the ISS.
The nuclear engine isnt a far fetched idea and is in actuality a simple concept. where the difficulties lie is in weight, crew shielding, ground safety in the event of an anomaly, and obviously cost. It would still require a conventional booster to get it to the upper atmosphere to where the nuclear engine can safely be started. $600 million? Just think if it was NASA then it would be $6 billion or more.
