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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 $5 billion. However SpaceX, whose Falcon family of launch vehicles has a made in the USA rocket engine, could benefit tremendously if the U.S. military switches its business from ULA while it refurbishes its own launch vehicles with new American made engines.
Ah no. At best, they lease it. Of all people you should realize the impermanence of ownership.
As as aside, it should be pointed out that the Russia isn't the only country that makes rocket engines. Arianespace has some perfectly cromulent launch systems available for hire. Bulk discounts likely available. The advantage for them is that they are quite further along with the systems integration than SpaceX.
However, it may be even less politically palatable to be beholden to the .... French .... for space access.
'Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time.'
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"Running the government like a business" has been a catchphrase used by both major parties for some years now. Outsourcing in order to save money is standard practice in business. Is it surprising that they did exactly that?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
To redistribute money from common taxpayers to military-industrial complex corporations.
- Dwight Eisenhower
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Name the mission that "goes up in flames" with the engine, then you can complain. Lockheed-Martin had engines made by American companies and even told Congress that even the Russian engines they purchased could be made in America (as recently as February when they made that pronouncement again under oath at a congressional hearing). This whole thing is a problem of their own making, and I hardly loose sleep or cry that they made themselves so vulnerable because of foreign outsourcing of their product line. All in the name of trying to make a buck or two extra.
Name the mission that "goes up in flames" with the engine, then you can complain. Lockheed-Martin had engines made by American companies and even told Congress that even the Russian engines they purchased could be made in America (as recently as February when they made that pronouncement again under oath at a congressional hearing). This whole thing is a problem of their own making, and I hardly loose sleep or cry that they made themselves so vulnerable because of foreign outsourcing of their product line. All in the name of trying to make a buck or two extra.
Russian engines are reliable. American made ones who knows ?
Copying is easy, making sure the copy is as reliable as the original is a whole other game.
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
Actually, out sourcing like this made perfect sense.
It started at a time which we wanted to calm down a threat. You, lile many others in this thread think this was only about being cheep and saving money. It is or was not. When we started buying from the Russians, it was about funneling money to them in ways that didn't create resentment while dealing with their concerns about continued US military strength after the colapse of the USSR.
In short, this had more diplomatic reasoning than financial when it was implemented. It served those diplomatic purposes well until recently when the advantage has been turned around. But ignoring the diplomatic aspect originally involved does not explain the situation properly.
If you look at the raw numbers (total number of launchers vs failures), the most reliable engines today are actually Chinese, with American next, and then Russian.