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.'"

Comments

The US REALLY needs some competition

[dolphin558]

Our private sector isn't taking off as many expected and NASA is...well NASA(this is coming from a former employee). We should covertly help China and Russia with their space and rocketry programs in order to kickstart congressional butts(read $$moolah) into action. Mars is a waste of time(radiation, gullies caused by CO2 not water, etc etc) The Space Station needs fiscal help Europa and Pluto missions are up in the air. something really needs to be done.

Russian v. US

[guamman]

In this instance, the russians have the right idea, their Rokot booster follows the market to a tea. As a general rule, private companies have used for smaller and therefore cheaper rockets with up to a 20 ton cargo capacity. It is this private investment that will make space travle feasible. The governemnts of the world cannot simply fund a continuing space progam to the fullest extent and other sources must be sought. Big rockets may be better for space travel to Mars and the like, but the demand now is for smaller ones and that may be how Russia gets its feet off the ground (literally).

Atlas V is russian powered..

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that the Atlas V is not powered by an American engine, it's powered by a closed-cycle Russian engine - the type Americans could never manage to work out how to build..

It's interesting to see 1960s Russian tech comfortably beating American tech, despite the sizable difference in available resources.

Re:Will space improve Russia's economy?

[torpor]

I agree with you. Space *is* a growth industry for Russia, and they are very good at it, if not the best - depending on the criteria by which you judge success.

I have so much faith in Russia's space program, and European efforts in general, that I'm abandoning all hope of going to space by way of the USofA, (Inc.) - a nation crippled by its own nationalism - and moving to Europe to pursue, rather aggressively, my own attempts to do a few orbits by way of Star City.

This may sound strange, but really - a private citizen such as myself has a better chance in Europe, than in the US, for getting into orbit in their lifetime ... thanks to Russia.

Good Change

[Chayce]

It's nice to see old I.C.B.M. designs used as satelite launch vehicles and not the other way around. I say this because a lot of ICBM testing was done with the cover story of being failed sattelite launches. If a craft is launched and falls apart in suborbit, and the people who launched it say it was a failed satelite shot, it's easy to miss when the mock warhead comes down in the middle of the pacific to be picked up by a ship for telemetry download. So perhaps times are really changing now. Or maybe the lies have changed.

Re:NASROCKET

[Burgundy Advocate]

Did somebody say "fault tolerant"?

Remember, when a car engine blows up, you have a good chance of stopping and getting out.

When a rocket engine blows up people die.

Though I'd have to agree with you that we need to change our design philosophy. We could learn a lot from the russians in that respect -- build them big, dumb, and solid :)