New russian manned spaceship unveiled, manned ATV version

Russia unveiled new manned spaceship design.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7519723.stm

This capsule is going to use powered landing. Interesting. Using thrusters for soft-land looks like a waste of mass, unless they are going to use it in environment where parachutes will do no good (read: the moon).

This article also mentions plans to develop manned ATV. It is pressurized. so it sound doable. What do you think?

If only 10% of all spacship design were actually built and flown to space, we would have Mars colonies long ago...

Over the last few years there has almost been a constant story running of ESA partnering with the Russians on a series of different manned spacecraft, none of which made it much further than the drawing board. Even Klipper which the Russians produced an engineering model of eventually went no where, I dont see this being any different.


I think that it is extremely unwise for Europe not to have its own vehicle but I havent seen anything to convince me that it will build one. It always comes down to money and who is going to pay for it, and with the world edging towards a recession with higher fuel prices I dont see the necessary money being made available. Still I'm always hopeful that one day Europe will bite the bullet and you never know maybe this idea will actually result in something more substantial.

Anatoly Zak doesn't say that the new proposal will use a powered descent alone, he only said, that the landing itself will be powered (as it is already today with the Soyuz capsules!).

It could be possible that a potential parachute would be jettisoned at a few dozen meters altitude.

I have at least two incidents in mind where the parachute dragged the Soyuz capsule into dangerous situations after landing, so that could be the reason. (A "normal" dragging occured very often with sometimes smaller bruises).

One time as far as I remember was the Soyuz drawn under water (in a lake landing) by the parachute until the crew could jettison the parachute. The second incident I have in mind was a launch abort that saw the capsule coming down in a mountainous area with strong winds where the Soyuz then was dragged towards an abyss.

edit: I only found the mass of the main parachute.. it is about 90 kg. Add drogue chutes and a reserve parachute as well as the necessary supporting equipment, so you get I would estimate some 400 kg for the parachute system.