Поехали! Russia Plans Atomic-Powered Spaceship

[V4D3R]

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009...red-spaceship/



News agency RIA-Novosti reports on the latest Russian super-villain scheme: A nuclear-powered spacecraft.

According to the report, Roscosmos, Russia’s Federal Space Agency has a new design for a manned spacecraft powered by a nuclear engine. Anatoly Perminov, the head of the agency, told reporters yesterday the goal of the Megawatt-class spaceship was “implementing large-scale space exploration programs.”

And, of course, “swallowing American spaceships in its mechanical jaws.” Kidding!

Perminov added that this new spacecraft — which will have a preliminary design by 2012 — is supposed to help Russia maintain its edge in space, and possibly allow travel to the Moon or Mars. But Anatoly Koroteyev, president of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics and head of the Keldysh research center, told RIA-Novosti that setting up permanent base on the moon was still out of the question.

Atomic kitsch. It never goes out of style, does it? Of course, my favorite proposal for nuclear-powered space exploration remains Project Orion. The concept was built around a spacecraft — pictured here — that would poop out a thermonuclear device and then ride the shockwave from the bomb’s detonation into space. Nice idea, but the nuclear-powered pogo stick never got past the drawing board.

[IMAGE: Wikimedia]

[V4D3R]

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[Drunken Monk]

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,..,

[check two]

Those Russians are a bunch of meat heads.

[THE MASON]

which will have a preliminary design by 2012

^ that will fuel some doomsday theory cats

[Edgar Erebus]

I really don't know why, but it seems that America, despite being not even nearly as fucked up country as Russia, is always catching Russky tail in space race.

But then again, Russians were able to organize and successfully exploit a network of few thousand labor camps (without privatizing them), so they are obviously able to do more than just kill their brain cells with moonshine vodka every evening.