ATV's Docking system improves car assembly

[Dig Gil]

[my first spacecraft news thread :hotcool:]
I got this from Twitter, don't know if anyone already knew it: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM0AKOJH4G_index_0.html

 

[Turbinator]

Europe already has a spacecraft and a launcher, all they need is a crew return capsule, and they are set. But to bad that's never going to happen.

 

[T.Neo]

Yay, another NASA (in this case, ESA) spin-off...

 

[Urwumpe]

Europe already has a spacecraft and a launcher, all they need is a crew return capsule, and they are set. But to bad that's never going to happen.

Never say never. So far, all engineers I talked with are enthusiastic about teaching the ATV new tricks, they see the extremely high potential...and 3.2 billion € for making the ATV a manned capsule is in spaceflight reality a bargain. The USA pay a multiple of that already for their Orion capsule and the mild Soyuz upgrades of the past years are also somewhere around 2.5 billion €.

 

[T.Neo]

all engineers I talked with

Let me guess... these "engineers" that you spoke to were actually 40 year old men working with the FBI?

 

[Urwumpe]

Let me guess... these "engineers" that you spoke to were actually 40 year old men working with the FBI?

No, most of them work for EADS Bremen, some others are lost inside the German Aerospace Agency.