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Russia’s new manned spacecraft to be 3.5 times cheaper than US Dragon

Russia plans to launch the Federation space vehicle in 2021

MOSCOW, January 22. /TASS/. Russia’s State Corporation Roscosmos intends to spend over 58 billion rubles ($734 million) on a new manned spacecraft or 3.5 times less than NASA has allocated to SpaceX on the Dragon space vehicle, according to a document published on Friday.

The funds for the project to develop the new manned spacecraft called Federation are stipulated in a draft federal space program for 2016-2025 prepared for submission to the Russian government.

Under the document, 58 billion rubles will be spent on R&D work to develop the ‘promising manned transport system’ through 2025, or 8 billion rubles ($101 million) less than was planned last year.

As was reported earlier, SpaceX will receive $2.6 billion from NASA to develop the Dragon 2 manned spaceship. Meanwhile, the development of the new Russian space vehicle will cost just $734 million.

Russia plans to launch the Federation space vehicle in 2021. Subsequent launches to the International Space Station in the manned and unmanned modes are scheduled for 2023.

A space vehicle to fly around the Moon will be created in 2024-2025 and the flight is planned after 2025.

The previous draft federal space program stipulated financing in the amount of 66.689 billion rubles ($844 million) before budget cuts. The manned flight to the International Space Station was planned in 2024 and the spacecraft was expected to fly around the Moon in 2025.

The promising new-generation transport spaceship developed by Energiya Rocket and Space Corporation is designed to deliver humans and cargoes to the Moon and near-Earth orbital stations

The spacecraft will have a crew of up to four persons. The new space vehicle will be able to operate autonomously for up to 30 days and its flight as part of an orbital station can last up to one year.

The Angara-A5V heavy-class rocket is expected for use to deliver the new spacecraft into orbit.

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