Little twins may be fine for flying around Planet Earth, but to get to the International Space Station, you need something beefier. The Russians have been working for a while on a next-generation rocket-launched Space Shuttle called Clipper, and are hoping to get a funding boost from the European Space Agency in 2006 to move the project forward. The ESA's 17 member states considered the proposal at a meeting in December. They didn't come up with a firm commitment, but they didn't nix the idea either. The leader of the ESA, Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain, told DW-World he will "make all the efforts I can in the next few months to secure wide participation for Clipper." Dordain said he hopes to win approval for the project by June.
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