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Russian RD-180 Embargo Could Boost American Rocket Industry
MarkWhittington (1084047) writes According to a Saturday story in the Los Angeles Times, the recent revival of tensions between the United States and Russia, not seen since the end of the Cold War, may provide a shot in the arm for the American rocket engine industry. Due in part in retaliation for economic sanctions that were enacted in response to Russian aggression in the Ukraine, Russia announced that it would no longer sell its own RD-180 rocket engines for American military launches. This has had American aerospace experts scrambling to find a replacement. The stakes for weaning American rockets off of dependency on Russian engines could not be starker, according to Space News. If the United States actually loses the RD-180, the Atlas V would be temporarily grounded, as many as 31 missions could be delayed, costing the United States as much as $5 billion. However SpaceX, whose Falcon family of launch vehicles has a made in the USA rocket engine, could benefit tremendously if the U.S. military switches its business from ULA while it refurbishes its own launch vehicles with new American made engines.
SpaceX and the American people thank you, Mr Putin.
Corporations — Less pissy than governments, since 1347.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
"Atlas V would be temporarily grounded, as many as 31 missions could be delayed"
It sounds like it should save the government money.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I love how the writer of the article tries to bend the story as if the russians were somehow bad for not selling military equipment to a country that turned on them.
I know it's standard american hipocrisy, but I still find it disgusting how always americans always pretend to be blind to the reasons for which they are hated, and only see the hate and point at it.
Come to think of it... I seem to remember there is a group of people who always did that... who were they?
That the official operating procedure for the biggest military on Earth, many times over, is to buy mission critical equipment from anywhere that will sell it the cheapest and to not have any redundancy in place to ensure continued supply or alternatives?
What is the point of even having a military if that military requires good relationships with all other powerful nations on Earth to continue to function.
I can only imagine the level of damage a Chinese embargo would do.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
If Musk successfully executes his reusable rockets plan, every US government launch will produce a 0 cost rocket for up to 20 more commercial missions.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
On top of the current research budget:
Move 10% of the US military budget to space R&D.
50% of that goes into general (civillian) research, the other 50% can stay in rocket/missile/sattelite research connected to to military.
Of the the 50% that go into the civillian branch, give out (total) 10% to private companies, fund universities and NASA with the rest.
We'd roughly see 65 billion put to new uses, of that go like 30 to the civilian sector, of those like 6 to private companies/general funding of companies. Annually.
I think we'd be seeing a Golden Age of Space pretty soon where there's simply no question how to get stuff into space - without losing any capability of finding new way to being able to blow up foreign people on all scales.
Wait... does anyone seriously think that Congress will pass funding for anything related to NASA and the space programs? The current, Tea Party locked, science committee that recently called Climate Science "not science at all", Congress???
Good luck with that.
Unless it's a back-scratch back-room subsidy for their ilk and/or a state they wanna buy votes outta, forget it. Not ... going... to... happen.
I actually had no idea we were buying Russian rockets.
Oh well, at least they are better than North Korean models.
So, what is the Arianes launch record and failure determinations?
I wonder if SpaceX has a design for a heavy lifter yet...
There is a great documentary on YouTube on the subject of the engines and United Launce Alliance's work on buying them from Russia to be fitted to launch vehicles. The Russians were doing things with their engines which Americans thought impossible until they were demonstrated first-hand. This video has those initial tests towards the end of the file.
The Engines That Came in From The Cold
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
One of the companies who makes the launch system was required to take out a license to produce the boosters themselves. This is the backup plan.
It's not a great backup plan, because just having the plans and license doesn't mean you necessarily can make them, especially with the reliability needed for defense launches.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Are you actually telling me? That the official operating procedure for the biggest military on Earth, many times over, is to buy mission critical equipment from anywhere that will sell it the cheapest and to not have any redundancy in place to ensure continued supply or alternatives?
Well it is not the military that chose this policy, it was the civilian leadership that commands the military. The White House and Congress decided to kill existing programs that could have provided domestic launch capabilities, decided to use the Russians for launch until commercial ventures like SpaceX could become viable.
I would rather be taken out with a US made rocket armed domestic drone shouting my hometown USA alma mater hoorahs than with a russian made rocket purchased with our US taxpayer money. Just trying to be a good patriot here.
Soon to be spied on by satellites launched by wholesome American made rocket engines!
God bless America!
This is a case where the Russians clearly had, and have, superior technology. The thrust to weight ratio of the RD-180 is, to my knowledge, unmatched by anything in the western inventory.
However let's be real, western payloads can get into orbit. It may cost more but there are numerous alternatives. JAXA, ESA, ULA (with different engines), Space-X, Bigelow. Heck we could arrange a launch or two with the Indians or Chinese in a pinch. Don't bother telling me how "the west is stranded on the ground." That is most certainly hype and not true.
NASA got in to orbit before the RD-180 (literally hundreds of times) and they will do it again. In fact the RD-180 is very likely to come back in to widespread western use again, once this business with the Ukraine is sorted out.
No more shuttle so we could save a trivial amount of tax money. We've shipped our manufacturing to China to make more money for CEOs and upper management who can live anywhere and could give a rat's ass about the USA.
Gee, I wonder where that could all end? Any ideas?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
In the GHW Bush(41) and Clinton(42) Presidential administrations BOTH parties saw banefits from chanting "The Cold War is OVER!" and the bi-partisan dysfunctiona and corruption of those years is STILL harming the American taxpayers and workers. The elder Mr Bush wanted to say the cold war was over both so HE could take credit for its smooth ending and so his international business associates could be freed from cold war trade restrictions. Mr Clinton wanted to say the cold war was over so he could please his base by cutting defense and shifting money to social programs. The net result of this political short-sightedness was that [1] huge portions of America's best tech manufacturing were shipped to asia [2] the Russians (who still have ICBMS aimed at the US, just as we still have them aimed at Russia) were given easier access to western tech [3] China was enabled to rise in military, economic and international stature, [4] huge waves of American tech and aerospace workers were laid-off and [5] American defense contractors contracted and were permitted to merge at an alarming rate without anti-monopoly restrictions. Each defense contractor merger was justified by the claim that the new environment would not support multiple vendors of a particular prduct.
Where we used to have lots of significant aerospace firmes like North American Aviation, Rockwell, Convair, Douglass, McDonell, Martin, Grumman, Lockheed, and many many more (SOME of which had merged during the Cold War) we ended-up going down to essentially three big guys: Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and Northrop-Grumman and a bunch of small vendors who made sub-assemblies (this is the category rocket engines fall into).
In this environment, America HAD three significant rocket engine vendors: liquid-fuelled engine maker Rocketdyne (of the Saturn V F-1 and Space Shuttle SSME fame) AerojeGeneral (maker of the liquid-fueled engines on the Gemini-Titan, and also many, primarily unsegmented, solid rockets) and ATK (maker of the large segmented solids used to boost the Space Shuttle). The Obama administration recently approved of the merger of Rocketdyne and Aerojet (the two vendors who made liquid-fueled engines). Unfortunately Aerojet has in recent years been using its liquid-fueled engine capabilities to import Russian Engines stockpiled from the old Soviet moon rocket program (40 year old NK-33 engines) and turn them into at supposedly American AJ-26 engine (used on Orbital's new rocket that is coimpeting againsts SpaceX to haul cargo to the ISS). The merger of Boeing and Lockheed-Martin rocket launch businesses into a single vendor called ULA (United Launch Alliance) flys the Atlas V rocket which depends on Russian RD-180 engines. NONE of these vendors has had any interest in employing Americans designing and building American engines if they could import cheaper Russian stuff, Amercian nationa security be-damned... it's all about executive bonuses and stock valuations. Now that the Russian Engines are a problem, are any of these vendors starting on their own liquid engines? NOPE. The congress, however, always eager to do a little crony capitalism and bail-out their friends in the corporate board rooms are preparing to trow a pile of cash at ULA/Aerojet/Rocketdyne to build a replacement engine for the Atlas. Here are the problems:
1. America's traditional big aerospace firms were paid many hundreds of Billions of dollars over the decades to design and build a wide-range of launch vehicles and rocket engines. Every single one of these massive defense contractors was effectively fully-subsidised in the creation of these things in the first place. These contractors had some of the world's best engineers, technicians, manufacturing capabilities, and designs. They made the calculated choice to throw that all away and hire cheaper workers in Russia and buy cheaper engines from Russia in order to maximize profits at the risk to American national security. The American taxpayer should not now be made to back-fill the costs of re-establishing the domesti
Yeah, except that people smarter than you have already thought about that, and have plans and rights to build the RD-180's in the US. It will take a few years, yes, to get them into production, but this is not the disaster that you think it is.
We all know Russia wants the US to succeed as a World Super Power. Sometimes a Big brother just has to show a little Tough Love.
Increase security at SpaceX facilities, protect their cyber assets and put the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade on speed dial. Oh, and protect the employees.
We don't need mysterious failures of SpaceX launches.
I'm a bit surprised that they still use the RD-180 engine, I thought that it had a successor by now. It's after all 70s/80's technology.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The Saturn rocket development program and the initial lunar studies began under Eisenhower (which is how much of the early work was done and available for Kennedy to choose to use when he decided to send man to the moon for geopolitical reasons). The Saturn launch vehicles development began while Von Braun was still working (effectively "on a short leash") for the the US Army ballistic development office at the Redstone aresenal. The project was originally called the "Juno V" and was a follow-up to the Juno and Redstone boosters (The Saturn IB Booster was a stretched Juno booster tank surrounded by eight Redstone boosters and powerred by a cluster of eight H-1 engines (also from the Redstone)) Do some googling and LOOK at the pictures.
When Republican president (and former General) Eisenhower decided he wanted a civilian space agency, he teamed with Democrat Senator Lyndon Johnson to create a new agency (NASA) by moving Von Braun and his Redstone and Juno V projects from the US Army under the same roof with the government aviation R&D agency (NACA) and as part of the transition the Juno V project shed its "military" name and became the Saturn. The Army at that point really was not harmed by losing this purely R&D project since it did not need such a massive ICBM; The US had nuke warheads that were far smaller and lighter than the soviet ones and therefore only needed the Atlas, Redstone and Titan sized missiles (intermediate or intercontinental ranges). The initial launches of the Saturn Booster from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base were on the Army's dime.
Oh, and someday you should take the time to read ALL of Eisenhower's farewell address. His warning about a "military-inductrial complex" was a warning that modern technology and warfare had led to a place where government would need a permanent set of supliiers of high tech weapons and that this would lead to an impetus to buy werapons we dd not need but it would also lead to a public that would increasingly be told to do things because some elite group of scientists would tell them to; that the coming possible tyranny would by both by military-industrialists and by scientists.
Couldn't *possibly* have anything to do with the Republicans cuitting NASA's budget for decades, and the big three companies desitre to outsource for ROI.... Nah....
And as for an engine? I'll say it in one word: F1B
mark
The US engineers were working on better engines at the time, and competing those designs and using them would have maintained the US capability in LOX-RP1 engines, but LockMart wanted to save money so they went with the Russian engines and the US rocket engine makers then dropped their efforts (since the customer went away and made it clear he would not buy American). As a result, the US lost a lot of the experienced people, and institutional memeory, that we'd developed on the Saturn V program's massive F-1 engine project. Since the US developed and used the LOX-LH2 J-2 on the Saturn upper stages, SSME on the shuttle, and RS-68 on the Delta IV (and very recently the J-2X for the cancelled Constellation program), we kept all that in-house experience with hydrogen burning engines (which are poorer deep in the atmosphere but far more efficient iin the high atmosphere and in space)
So, while you are correct that the Russians had a high-performance engine, you are wrong about the rest and your conclusion; The decision WAS about money because it was CHEAPER to buy Russian than to finish any of the American designs. In fact, the US licensed the design of the RD-180 and has the legal right to make them in the US, but has never exercised that right BECAUSE BUYING THEM FROM RUSSIA IS CHEAPER. Now, however, the money spent on the license is probably a loss because [1] it has become known that even if we built them we would still require Russian support personnel during testing and use (since they have the design expertise) and [2] the license has an expiration date, so if we were to spend all the money to setup an assembly line and start production the first US manufactured RD-180 would likely just get through testing and certification in time for the license to expire.
It was ALWAYS about the MONEY for LockMart, and it STILL IS.
You cannot blame a coroporation for being completely morally-blind and totally un-patriotic, they ARE a business after all and their primary mission is to be profitable for their share holders. You CAN however blame the government for BUYING their product w/o regard for national security concerns (National Security IS the job of the Federal Govt) and you CAN be completely put-off by the hypocrisy of a giant defense contractor that continually screams that the taxpayers need to buy its newest products (to protect them from the "Russkies!") and then turns around and claims its completely fine to have our military space assets completely dependent upon engines made by those very same Russians... Which is it, LockMart???? Do we need to buy your rockets and missiles and F-35 planes or not? If the RD-180 is safe, then we do not need your other products.
See Jim Schefter's "Rocket's Red Glare" (http://books.google.com/books?id=xA5vzkW8IDsC&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=%22rocket's+red+glare%22+%22jim+schefter%22&source=bl&ots=6FVQPrjyrs&sig=D9tFU6qyj_Ybv82EVLwkm4_-R9U&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YmugU9mHA9SNqAaDxYCYDA&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22rocket's%20red%20glare%22%20%22jim%20schefter%22&f=false) on the RD-180.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.