MSNBC's Alan Boyle posts about Russia's new Clipper in his Cosmic Log, and links to the Astronautix feature discussing Clipper.
"Wade's accompanying graphic brings the point home. The drawing may not reflect the actual design, but it looks very much like Lockheed Martin's concept for NASA's next-generation Crew Exploration Vehicle. In contrast, the analogous CEV design from the Boeing Co. has more in common with the old Apollo command module. Both of the CEV designs hint at a mostly expendable system like the Soyuz, rather than a mostly reusable system like the shuttle. This would represent an about-face from the trend set two decades ago by the shuttle and its Soviet carbon copy."
Posted by jburk at February 25, 2026 05:35 PM | TrackBackMostly reusable Shuttle? Hmm lets see.. The shuttle consists of 3 parts, the External Tank (burns up in atmosphere) the Booster rockets, which costs more to recover, scrub and refurbish then to build new ones. Lastly the orbiter itself, which 20-40% of it is replaced each use. I guess on average thats 51% the same craft each time.
Also the Buran was not a carbon copy. Its actually an improved and safer version of our shuttle. The Orbiter itself doesn't have any rocket engines (just the manuever jets) The External tank is actionally a full blown rocket in its own right. this means no fuel actually flows through the orbiter so in some cases durring launch it is possible to abort from going into orbit and detach from the rocket and land safely on earth. Our shuttle's engines are replaced each time anyways so there is no loss.
The Soviets scrapped the program cause they soon realized that we were lieing how cheap it was. They were better off with the souyez and proton launch vehicals for what was being done in space. Heck, we would have been better off using Saturn-V then going to the space shuttle, while devloping a truely reusable system
Posted by: Matthew Brown at February 26, 2026 11:50 AMOops, I see you had the Astronautix.com article!
As for why the Soviets scrapped their shuttle, they more than likely scrapped it due to economic problems, a military in need of reform (and money) and other things, not because we lied about how cheap our shuttle was.
The scrapping of Buran and other incidents in the Russian program lead me to believe that the Clipper will never be built. Now if we could all get off our high horses, imagine what we could accomplish. Clippers launched from the Ariane site on a Ariane 5 or an improved Russian booster, to dock at a ISS with a changed orbit...
All dreams, probably never to come, alas.
Posted by: Fred Kiesche at February 26, 2026 04:24 PM