M
mrmorris
Guest
<font color="yellow">"...now they're building a lifting body craft which is a clear advancement over the Soyuz..."</font><br /><br />And if they were to build a clean-sheet design capsule -- that too would be a clear advancement over a design that is 40+ years old. It would be pretty sad if they were unable to design a new craft that had obvious advantages to Soyuz.<br /><br />The Russians have a reliable and sustainable manned spacecraft. They can afford to experiment with a design that <b>looks</b> like it will work... on paper. If Kliper ends up being a dud -- they will still have Soyuz. They'll have the luxury of being able to go back to the Soyuz and can likely even make some improvements in that based on tech that gets developed during the Kliper R&D. NASA doesn't have the time or the money to play around right now.<br /><br />Tell you what -- you generally reject my capsule arguments out of hand. I'll play dirty this time... I'll pit your two heartfelt passions against each other. While the shuttle program is running, do you <b>really</b> think that NASA will have enough money to spend the proper amount developing a lifting-body vehicle? I <i>think</i> that you have agreed in the past that capsules (despite their myriad other failings) should be relatively cheap for NASA to build and operate. Would a lifting-body craft not work better as a successor to a capsule-CEV, when NASA actually has the budget to do it without making compromise after compromise that would likely make such a craft as much of a not-quite-right craft as the orbiters?