First deliveries of Superjet 100s put off over test delays-2

MOSCOW, March 24 (RIA Novosti) - Deliveries of the first Sukhoi Superjet 100 medium-range passenger aircraft have been postponed indefinitely over test delays, the head of the United Aircraft Building Corporation said on Monday.

“We are not ruling out that deliveries of the Superjet 100 aircraft to the first clients will be postponed over a delay in certification tests,” UABC CEO Alexei Fyodorov said.

He added that the first test flight was planned for next month.

A spokesman for Sukhoi Civil Aircraft, a civilian subsidiary of the Sukhoi aircraft manufacturer, confirmed that the first Superjet 100 would make its maiden flight in April.

“The airplane is currently in the final testing stages, and it will make its first flight within a month,” he said.

“Our specialists are working round the clock to meet our obligations to contractors,” he added.

Olga Kayukova, Sukhoi Civil Aircraft’s director for public relations, said another two Superjet 100 airplanes were in the final stages of assembly, and a fourth jet was on its way.

“That will enable us to certify all four prototype aircraft within the specified timeframe,” she said.

Originally, the first Superjet 100 deliveries were to be made in late 2008.

The Superjet 100 project is a family of medium-range passenger aircraft developed by the Sukhoi Design Bureau in cooperation with major American and European aviation corporations, including Boeing, Snecma, Thales, Messier Dowty, Liebherr Aerospace, and Honeywell.

Sukhoi aircraft manufacturer successfully tested Superjet 100 engines in mid-February.

The company plans to manufacture at least 700 Superjet 100s, and intends to sell 35% of them to North America, 25% to Europe, 10% to Latin America, and 7% to Russia and China.

Mikhail Pogosyan, Sukhoi’s general director, said in January that the company had secured 73 solid orders for the aircraft.

The list price of a 95-seat base model is $28 million, but the company is currently working on both smaller and larger capacity modifications.

The market for the Superjet 100 is estimated at around $100 billion for around 5,500 planes, through to 2023.

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European space agency set to play greater role in ISS project

On March 9, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched its Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), which will dock with the International Space Station (ISS) and open a new page in the troubled station’s history.

Yet Russia, the country that has probably done more than any other to keep the ISS project alive, is considering calling it a day.

Russia has sunk much material and emotional investment into the ISS. The Russian public are accustomed to their role as the world’s space pioneers, and Russia has for decades led the way in long-duration manned orbital missions, first in the space station Mir, and later in the ISS. Moreover, everyone is aware of the Herculean efforts of the Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) to sustain the ISS and fly in relief crews after the 2003 Columbia disaster put a freeze on shuttle flights.

However, those emotional ties eventually have to give way to practical considerations, such as statistics, kilowatt/hours, communications channels, etc.

It would be an understatement to say that the Russian contribution to the ISS project is declining. Right now, the station has eight modules, including only three Russian-made elements, i.e. Zarya, Zvezda and the Pirs docking compartment. Top managers at the Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, the main Russian ISS-project contractor, say that those three modules generate only 5 kWt, instead of the required 50 kWt, and that the station’s Russian segment therefore lacks power.

Two power-generating modules are planned, but will only be launched in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Roskosmos currently has to pay $2,000 per kWt to the United States and to negotiate mutual clearing schemes. Energia CEO Vitaly Lopota said the American and Russian segments would generate 100 and 7 kWt by 2009 and 2011, respectively.

Until recently, Russia flew NASA and ESA astronauts to the ISS. But its transport monopoly would soon be broken if the ATV project succeeds. Although the ATV is still undergoing tests, it is clear that the EU wants to fly its own manned missions to the ISS.

NASA’s feelings about the European achievements appear to vary between vexation and relief. In his March 7 article “NASA Wary of Relying on Russia” Washington Post Staff Writer Marc Kaufman said: “In 2 1/2 years, just as the station gets fully assembled, the United States will no longer have any spacecraft of its own capable of carrying astronauts and cargo to the station. The three space shuttles will be retired by then, because of their high cost and questionable safety, and NASA will have nothing ready to replace them until 2015 at the earliest.”

“For five years or more, the United States will be dependent on the technology of others to reach the station. To complicate things further, the only nation now capable of flying humans to the station is Russia,” the article said.

“NASA Administrator Michael Griffin calls the situation his ‘greatest regret and greatest concern.’ … NASA’s budget calls for spending $2.6 billion for transportation to the space station between fiscal 2009 and 2013. As it stands now, much of that would go to the Russians,” the article said.

The U.S. Senate considers this to be the worst possible scenario.

It seems that NASA, which did not believe that the ATV project would succeed, is now lamenting the longtime discrimination against the ESA as an ISS partner. It should be noted in this connection that the ESA’s Columbus laboratory was delivered to Cape Canaveral in May 2006, but did not lift off aboard the shuttle Atlantis until this February.

Jean-Yves Le Gall, CEO of Arianespace, a public-private company manufacturing, operating and marketing Ariane 5 launch vehicles, said in an interview last week that the company would like to play a larger role in supplying the ISS. Le Gall said the EU is scheduled to decide in November whether to enter the field of human spaceflight and become a full-fledged participant in the ISS project.

The United States is well aware of the EU’s space ambitions and has to choose a partner for near-Earth space exploration in the short- and mid-term. Nor does the ESA conceal the fact that it is prepared for closer cooperation with NASA. “We believe we can be an important part of the solution for the space station and counterbalance to the Russians, if we are given a chance,” Le Gall said.
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