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[=http://www.spacedaily.com/2004/040217162450.jv3llwwg.html]SpaceDaily
Minimum (!) 6 persons, *reusable* capsule... not sure it'll be launched on the existing Soyuz, they think about upgrades...
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Hmmm... If they plan to launch manned missions from Kourou (French Guyana) maybe they won't even have to upgrade their launchers by that much...
They're planning manned launchers from there, eventually, but first unmanned, of course that's just a question of support-hardware on the ground that has to be built to accomodate human launches.
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Theyre planning on usuing an unmanned soyuz-2 (upgrade) from Kourou - apparently theyd need to convert to much of the existing soyuz to adapt it for emergency ditching into the atlantic.
The new 6 man craft will use a new launcher in the 12-14 ton range, as far as i know.
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could this be a revamped [http://www.astronautix.com/craft/zarya.htm]Zarya ? The numbers and reusability sound eerily familiar. Zarya got scrapped post 1989 due to inancial reasons (post USSR chaos)
Now Russia *is* doing better, 7% yearly growth, biggest of the world, maybe they are thinking Zarya was not such a bad idea after all...
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Looks like they're serious, The craft has a -tentative- name: Clipper (? is that Russian?)
Also the uprated Soyuz gets a name: Onega
Source: [http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id … do_alert=0]Novosti release
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it's Kliper...
[http://www.1tv.ru/owa/win/ort6_main.mai … azdel_id=4]Artist rendition...
but my browser doesn't support cytillic typeface...
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