S
scipt
Guest
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6260724.stm<br /><br />Industrial groups in Europe are about to look in detail at ideas for a new launch system to put humans in space. <br /><br />The meetings have been convened by the European Space Agency (Esa) under a development study that involves Russia - with Japan also eager to contribute. <br /><br />The discussions at industrial level will formally start in July. <br /><br />Europe is keen to see a crew transport system that is independent of the US Orion vehicle, which is set to replace the space shuttles in the next decade. <br /><br />The new Crew Space Transportation System (CSTS) could be an updated and enhanced version of the venerable Russian Soyuz approach or an entirely new concept. <br /><br />"We need two transportation systems; we cannot rely on only one," said Daniel Sacotte, Esa's director of Human Spaceflight, Microgravity and Exploration. <br /><br />"We want to have parallel systems, to be cooperative; so that if one system has a failure there is another one that allows space exploration to continue," he told BBC News. <br /><br />Back to the future <br /><br />The industrial partners on the project in Europe include EADS-Astrium (which leads the production of Ariane rockets and built the Columbus space station module) and Thales Alenia Space. For Russia, which will lead the study, Soyuz manufacturer RKK Energia will be involved. <br /><br />The investigation hopes to provide some conclusions that can be taken before Europe's space ministers when they next meet in 2008. <br /><br />Esa has released about 18m euros for the work. If ministers approved further development of a CSTS, they would have to commit many hundreds of millions of euros more. <br /><br />The Americans are returning to some of the Apollo heritage for their new Orion project - a flight capsule and service module launched on "single stick" rockets, in contrast to the spaceplane config <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>