The era of American reusable shuttles - long, great, very dramatic and extremely controversial - is over. Now, for some time, the Russian disposable Soyuz spacecraft will be the complete masters of near-earth space. It is these spacecraft that will be entrusted with the honorable mission of delivering crews and necessary cargo to the International Space Station.
The space shuttle fleet consisted of 5 vehicles - Atlantis, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery and Endeavor. In total, over the course of their existence, the shuttle traders have carried out 135 launches into space, and have returned to earth 133 times. In 1986, the infamous Challenger exploded at the start; in 2003, the Columbia shuttle collapsed upon entering the atmosphere. In these two disasters, 14 astronauts died. During their careers, the space shuttles have delivered more than 1.6 thousand tons of cargo to low-earth orbit, including 180 satellites, as well as ISS components. Reusable shuttles returned 53 previously launched satellites back to Earth. This truly unique opportunity is now beyond the reach of humanity. The shuttles also carried out routine and emergency repairs to the Hubble orbiting telescope - now there is no one to repair it.
What will happen next remains a secret behind seven seals, but there is information that the American aerospace agency NASA may transfer the right to space flights to private aerospace companies, which have been successfully developing their own ships and launch vehicles for a long time. But on the other hand, it is too early to say that such companies will help in solving state space problems. First of all, this is due to the fact that there are literally a few such companies, and the main goal of their work is the development and testing of suborbital passenger aircraft, which will exclusively carry rich citizens to the borders of the Earth's atmosphere. In other words, these are purely commercial projects that have nothing to do with science.
But if one can only speculate about what will happen next, then the current situation is more transparent and obvious. For example, in the American media you can read the following headlines: "Welcome to bondage to the Russians", "Moscow gets a monopoly on manned flights." These and similar headlines prove that Russia is guaranteed dominance in space in the coming years. Indeed, with the rejection of the use of reusable shuttles, the Americans have nothing to deliver cargo and astronauts to the ISS, except on Russian ships. However, there is a real alternative for cargo - the second European orbital truck ATV-2 "Johannes Kepler". But this rather capacious device makes flights no more than once a year, and the Russian Progress vehicles fly regularly.
Of course, this situation is somewhat offensive for the United States as the second great space nation. It is still necessary to pay for space flights - and a lot. But in this situation, the Americans themselves are to blame. The fact that reusable shuttles needed to be changed was well known for a long time, but all programs related to the creation of new ships have failed with "success". Moreover, after considerable money was allocated for their development, the standard scheme for stopping work was applied - "sawing".
With budgetary constraints growing, NASA is seeking to shift responsibility for space exploration more and more to private companies. As an example, we can recall that after signing a contract with NASA for satellite launches, the private company SpaceX developed and tested new Falcon-1 and Falcon-9 launch vehicles. It is also currently developing the first heavy launch vehicle, Falcon Heavy, and a spacious space truck for the ISS Dragon.
Nevertheless, it is unrealistic to solve the problem in this way - the space industry requires significant investments and cooperation of a huge number of enterprises. Private corporations, in spite of their aspiration, simply will not be able to raise a really breakthrough project, which is the creation of a manned spacecraft, and everything connected with it.
Despite the fact that the United States does not currently have manned reusable spaceships, reusable military shuttles will exist, even if unmanned. A similar ship is the miniature shuttle X-37B. This space shuttle, weighing only 5 tons and launched with a conventional launch vehicle, is making a flight into space for the second time. The first flight took place in 2010 and lasted 270 days. The second flight was launched on March 5 of this year and will last until that time.
The creation and launch of the X-37B spacecraft caused a lot of controversy - it was called both an anti-satellite interceptor and a space bomber. However, the idea of attributing this unit to the bombers disappeared almost immediately, given its extremely small payload. Its behavior in low-earth orbit suggests that it is most likely a special reentry reconnaissance reconnaissance vehicle.
Of course, Russia is extremely jealous of everything related to strategic stability. Therefore, we cannot allow American competitors to have a completely new military spacecraft with unique capabilities, but we do not have one. In this case, the situation of the last decades of the XX century is repeated - then, as a contrast to the originally military space shuttle Space Shuttle, the Buran was developed and built, which eventually made only one flight and was destroyed without the possibility of restoration in 2002 due to collapse of the Assembly and Testing Building No. 112 of the Baikonur cosmodrome.
A few weeks ago, New Scientist published an interview with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, in which he stated in plain text that both the "shuttles", officially recognized as purely civilian ships, and "Buran" had a dual purpose, in other words, they could well be used as space nuclear bombers.
For the first time, the public learned information that a mini-"shuttle" for military purposes is being developed in Russia from the commander of the Space Forces, Lieutenant General O. Ostapenko. At the beginning of this year, he said that "today we are developing something in this area." Of course, all work is carried out in strict secrecy - until the moment the device is launched into flight, no one will know anything about it. According to unofficial data, our spacecraft is much larger than the X-37B and will have quite "impressive characteristics." At the same time, with its creation, we are, of course, lagging behind the United States.
At the same time, information comes in that Russia is creating several different weapon systems to destroy or partially disable the enemy's orbiting satellites. Taking into account the fact that Russian designers in this area back in the days of the USSR created much more groundwork than other states of the world put together, the Americans should not start an arms race in space in their own interests.
