Slashdot Mirror
US & Russia Show Off New Rocket Designs
jonerik writes "Following up on today's story on the Soviet Union's massive N1 rocket are these two articles on the latest US and Russian rocket designs. Space.com covers the American side of things, with a story on Lockheed Martin's Atlas 5 and Boeing's Delta 4 boosters. The Associated Press has this article on the Russians' Rokot booster, originally built in the '70s as the SS-19 ICBM and converted to civilian use in the mid-'90s. The Rokot was in the news this past weekend when it successfully launched a pair of US-German satellites - dubbed Tom and Jerry - into orbit to map the Earth's gravitational field and 'chart large-scale movements of water around Earth.'"
Aren't Russians and the other ex-communist countries against America and the capitalist way of life? Don't they hold spite against these people who were their enemies or do they completely forgive Americans and have no loyalty to communism?
Pretty much all of the folks from eastern Europe who I've talked to were thrilled to be rid of the Russians and communism. There are few who would say that the transition was easy or that capitalism doesn't have its own set of problems, and some countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, East Germany) have done better for themselves than others (Yugoslavia, Albania), but in many of the countries you'd be hard-pressed to find many people who'd be up for turning back the clock.
The Russians are another matter. Clearly, they've had a hard time of it, and I doubt they'll ever again be half as powerful as they were as part of the U.S.S.R. There's certainly some bitterness in some quarters, as well as a nostalgia for the communist era when the country was powerful. You know, "Communism beat the nazis, communism took us to space, and communism very nearly made us masters of the world!"
Would Russia ever go back to communism? At this point I'd be surprised, particularly since communist nostalgia means less and less to Russia's young as the years go by. But bitterness and nationalism? Yeah, that's there.
According to Encyclopedia Astronautica, RD-170 and RD-171, the original designs that led to Atlas III and Atlas V RD-180, were developed 1973-1985.
12 years - that's quite a bit of work.