* Astronomy

Russia is prepared to take over if the United States decides to scale back its support of the international space station, a Russian space official said this week.

Buoyed by improved economic conditions and bold new management and armed with mature designs for a new generation of space vehicles while NASA is mired in endless paper studies, the Russians are pushing a broad development program for the hardware that could replace the services now provided by the U.S. space shuttle.

“If the United States happens to leave the program, we'll be prepared," Alexander Medvedchikov, deputy head of the Russian Space Agency, said Tuesday in a briefing broadcast online from Moscow. "We are looking ahead, too,” he added.
The mainstays of the new Russian-provided logistics support for the space station would be a new reusable human spacecraft called "Kliper" and a new automated cargo transfer vehicle called "Parom."

Supplementing the transportation infrastructure for space-to-Earth delivery of experimental results (and perhaps crewmembers) would be a revolutionary inflatable heat-shield vehicle which is nearing another test flight.

Russia has also announced plans to launch its own scientific module to dock to the station in 2007 and a supplemental “energy module” several years after that.
Although revised NASA strategies for space involve phasing out the space shuttle in 2010 and reducing U.S. activities aboard the space station, no explicit intentions have been communicated to its partners. Neither the White House nor NASA has yet to "officially" refuse to indefinitely participate in the space station program, Medvedchikov said, but that announcement was expected.

At that point, the space station would be left without the heavy-lift and large-volume transport historically provided by the U.S. space shuttles. Expansion of the station, as well as maintenance and repair of significant hardware problems, might no longer be possible.

Evolution of new space vehicles

Space engineers at the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation, which builds and operates all Russian human space vehicles, have been refining their designs for their follow-on to the Soyuz crew transport vehicle that has, in various models, been the mainstay of Russian cosmonautics for almost 40 years. They have also engaged in a major sales campaign to obtain funding both in Moscow and abroad.

The "Kliper" (as in a "clipper ship") will use a bath-tub shaped lifting-body command module to carry six cosmonauts on a much gentler ride than the Soyuz. It will also have a disposable docking module at its aft end for carrying cargo and linking up with the space station.

Last May, the European Space Agency’s director of human spaceflight, Daniel Sacotte, was quoted in the Russian press as promising partial financing for Kliper from France, Germany, and Italy. Alan Thirkettle, ESA’s head of development for human space flight, told reporters that such cooperation would make Europe relatively independent of American restrictions on flights of European astronauts.

(taken from MSNBC article)