Sad to say, the days of those beautiful streamlined spacecraft beloved of science fiction illustrators are no more. Even the dumpy Space Shuttle will soon be no more than a bookmark of history, while single-stage-to-orbit concepts like the X-33 remain an unfulfilled dream.
In their place are coming a new generation of spacecraft that hark back to the successful days of the 1960s and 1970s, when ‘spam in a can’ astronauts rode aboard capsule craft such as Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. Today the longest-serving spacecraft is the Russian Soyuz, much improved over the original craft, but essentially unchanged since the first flight in 1966.
Before settling on the shape of NASA’s next-generation crewed spacecraft, many hybrids have been considered, including the one shown here, as envisaged by the supremely talented cgi outfit often used by NASA, John Frassanito & Associates. This particular design features seats for six astronauts plus racking bays for a pair of spacesuits. Riding down from orbit tip-first, soft landing would be achieved by parachutes and airbags, with skids to take the craft’s weight once on terra firma.
It’s a handsome-looking piece of machinery that would offer greater flexibility in landing-point selection than a conventional capsule. However, this advantage is not enough to outweigh the design’s extra cost, weight and complexity.
A pity - it looks good.
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