“Europe is eying Russia’s proposed crew-carrying Clipper spaceship, not only for use in International Space Station operations, but also to carve out their role in future Moon, Mars and beyond exploration.”
This “Russian” Clipper sure looks like one of the lifting bodies from NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. I believe they flew these planes during the 1960’s through the mid 1970’s.
I find it most interesting that the EU nations want to take it to the Moon. I would think a lifting body would work best with an atmosphere. I keep picturing the Europeans trying to use the lunar atmosphere to slow down their Russian lifting body to a safe speed for deployment of their parachutes.
Holtz
JeffersonRepublic.com
The excuse the Russians gave for their "Concordsky" SST knockoff of the Concorde, and for "their" Buran shuttle design, was that the laws of aerodynamics were the same everywhere. Regardless whether one believes that or not (I don't), the main problem with these Russian space proposals is, there's no capitalization to achieve them. Some US investors have snapped up some Soviet-era developments, such as the four engine cluster (which is called "multi-chamber", but it's just four engines joined together to reduce weight in the design, the same approach used for Korolev's N-1) used for the Buran's main engine. That model has been successfully used for commercial satellite launches.