[FPSPACE] joint European-Russian vehicle abandoned?

[agzak at optonline.net]

Bart:

If you followed Russian aerospace forums, you could probably feel strong opposition to the ACTS project and to the cooperation with the West in general. Based on what I heard privately, it is likely that the similar "anti-cooperation" party exists within the Russian space industry. As Russian economy recovers and the overall political climate between Russia and the West worsens, it is not a surprise that "do it yourself" attitude would be growing in Russia and the international cooperation would seen as an unnecessary burden. Krikalev's interview probably reflects that.

I tried to summarize all these conflicting political trends and technical considerations on these pages:

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/russia_2000_2010.html

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/acts.html

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/soyuz_acts_history.html

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/ard.html 


Anatoly Zak


----- Original Message -----
From: Bart Hendrickx <bhen at scarlet.be>
Date: Saturday, August 30, 2008 5:23 am
Subject: [FPSPACE] joint European-Russian vehicle abandoned?
To: fpspace at friends-partners.org

> Speaking in an interview with RIA Novosti on the occasion of his 50th
> birthday a couple of days ago, cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyov said the 
> following:
> 
> 
> 
> "As for the new space transportation system, not so long ago the 
> leaders of
> the Russian Space Agency were thinking that it had to be developed 
> jointlywith Europe. Now it has turned out that the Europeans don't 
> want to develop
> the ship together with Russia. While earlier we had been told that the
> European Space Agency wanted to jointly develop a new type of ship, 
> althoughwe ourselves weren't too sure what exactly we wanted,  now 
> it has become
> clear that each will have to do something on their own.  We just 
> have to
> clearly understand that and move on."
> 
> 
> 
> This would seem to contradict  other, more optimistic reports in 
> recentweeks and months on the joint European-Russian Crew Space 
> TransportationSystem (CSTS).  What's going on? Is he just 
> expressing a personal opinion or
> has ESA decided to abandon CSTS?
> 
> 
> By the way, Krikalyov, a veteran of six space missions with a 
> record 803
> days in orbit under his belt, is hoping to make yet another mission,
> preferably on the improved Soyuz-TMA that should make its debut 
> next year.
> 
> 
> 
> Bart Hendrickx