Russia plans nuclear spaceship

• Source: Global Times
• [01:54 October 30 2009]
• Comments

Russia expressed its ambition to build a nuclear-powered spaceship, as NASA's newest rocket successfully completed a brief test flight Wednesday.

Russian Federal Space Agency Chief Anatoly Perminov told a government meeting Wednesday that the preliminary design could be ready by 2012. It would then take nine years and 17 billion rubles ($668 million) to build the ship, he added.

"It's a very serious project," President Dmitry Medvedev said, hailing the plan and ordering the Cabinet to find the money to fund it.

Russia is currently using 40-year-old Soyuz rockets and capsules to send crews to the International Space Station, according to universetoday.com.

But the stated ambition contrasts with the slow progress, sounding more like a plea for extra funds than a detailed proposal, according to the AP.

Perminov said his plan was "a unique breakthrough project" that would put Russia ahead of foreign competitors in space.

However, he offered few details and didn't make clear what the ship's mission would be, whether it would be used near Earth, like the existing Soyuz spacecraft, or for voyages into deep space.

"It's one of a series of sucker-bait trial balloons looking for some government or corporation in the West with more dollars than sense," the AP quoted James Oberg, a consultant to the Russian space program, as saying.

Stanley Borowski, a senior engineer at NASA specializing in nuclear rocket engines, said that, in deep space, such engines are twice as fuel-efficient as conventional rocket fuel and would have many advantages on such missions as taking astronauts and gear to Mars.

Considering Russia's new ambition to build NERVA nuclear rockets that the US wanted to experiment with in the past, Maxwell, a user on universetoday.com, said the Russians were far behind on the payload curve and, "I can see why they'd want to catch up, but this seems a rather extreme way to do it."

"No one wants to live near a nuke launch pad, and even if it is only used in space you've still got to put it on top of a conventional rocket … which aren't always reliable themselves," Maxwell added.

"It's dangerous to put nuclear materials in space. They pose risks at re-entry," Greenpeace's Vladimir Chuprov said.

The UN outer-space treaty, in force since 1967 and ratified by 105 countries and regions, including Russia and the US, was designed to keep outer space free of nuclear weapons. It makes no mention of using nuclear energy for non-military purposes.

Agencies