Roskosmos plans to create a winged manned spacecraft, similar to the Soviet Buran, to replace the Soyuz MS. This was told by the head of the state corporation Dmitry Rogozin.
According to him, the Oryol spacecraft being created as a replacement for Soyuz MS for servicing orbital stations will be expensive.
“We need to make a reusable ship of a completely different configuration – something like the Buran with the ability to land on runways. I set such a task to our engineers, “RIA Novosti quotes Rogozin on August 7.
The Energia corporation and other enterprises of Roskosmos have already started to develop options. However, the creation of the ship will still take a long time, the head of the state corporation noted.
Rogozin pointed out that the MS Unions are constantly being modernized and will still serve.
The Buran was a Soviet winged spacecraft. Its only flight took place in 1988. It was carried out without a crew.
Earlier Rogozin said that the new crewed reusable spacecraft Crew Dragon, created by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is not capable of getting to the ISS as quickly as Russian ships.