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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.
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...
FTFY, just so you kids get some context.
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
Oh yeah...
FTFY, just so you kids get some context.
That is a quite contorted spin on events. You seem to hold an underlying premise that the Ukraine is a client state of Moscow and does not have the right to voluntarily establish economic relations with the EU nor military relations with NATO. And that Moscow is justified for invading and meddling in Ukrainian internal affairs when the Ukrainians decide Moscow is perhaps not their best option as a partner or friend.
And you take things further with an outright lie. Sanctions followed the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, no sanctions existed as the Ukraine was seeking to improve its relationship with the west, there was no "parallel to".
Oh yeah...
Due in part in retaliation for economic sanctions that were enacted in parallel to the NATO expansion to the Ukraine due to Russia invading Crimea under a flimsy legal pretense to secure their black sea port, Russia announced that it would no longer sell its own RD-180 rocket engines for American military launches.
Added just a little more context.
I'm sure we could do this all day-- the russian entanglement goes back to 1783 when Catherine the Great defeated the existing Khanate in power since 1449.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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.
NATO expansion to the Ukraine
NATO never expanded to the Ukraine. Their government asked to join in 2008 but was turned down; it's never been seriously considered since then. Perhaps you're confusing NATO, a US-dominated military alliance, with the European Union, which has nothing to do with the US (militarily or otherwise). It's the kind of distinction I can imagine the Russia Today writers glossing over, but these things do actually matter in the real world.
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.
NATO expanding means NATO troops/infrastructure there. You're thinking just the obvious, but that's what CNN/BBC writers like glossing over, yadda yadda yadda.
You colours are shining through. If you're going to be a long term about it, don't be an asshole and cherrypick - go all the way back to Kiovan Rus, and then to the history of said Khanate, which was basically about Tatar conquerors being dumped by retreating Mongols of Mongol-Tatar yoke and some of them saw Ottomans raping and slaving Slavic nations of the Northern Black Sea, so they moved there to help.
Defeat of Ottomans was a combined effort that galvanised Russian-Ukrainian alliance back then.
Just a note. People of Ukraine call it Ukraine. It is only Russians that call it The Ukraine.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Even if that is true (though arguably wrong - you know, there was an election) at least it's not a "flimsy legal pretense" to secure oil reserves (and other geo-political/economical interests) in countries without any substantial population of the actor (like Iraq, Sudan, I'm sure we could do this all day and night...).
Proven technology - not necessarily superior.
that said military thinking prized proven above all else... so your point is valid until proven otherwise.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
NATO expanding means NATO troops/infrastructure there. You're thinking just the obvious, but that's what CNN/BBC writers like glossing over, yadda yadda yadda.
According to a Russian news agency, this is not happening either: "NATO has no plans to deploy troops on the territory of Ukraine". This was one of the first links that came up when I Googled for "nato troops ukraine".
And there are WMDs in Iraq and no one's planning an invasion there. Sure think, Chekov!
Why don't the US just take the RD-180, tear it to bits, reverse engineer it and build a direct clone locally?
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?
Russians?
And there are WMDs in Iraq and no one's planning an invasion there. Sure think, Chekov!
Iraq is a good point of comparison: the US perceived a security threat where none existed - or at least not enough of one to be worth thousands of lives and trillions of dollars - and rushed to invade in the face of international condemnation, while making absurd claims about "liberating" the Iraqi people. We are still dealing with the fallout from that disaster, obviously. Putin has now invaded a sovereign nation under similar delusions and/or pretenses, and I can only hope that fewer people die in the process. Unlike the US, however, he actually annexed the territory. (Although it already worked once in Georgia, so perhaps he was encouraged by that precedent.)
->I'm also unaware of any historical precedents about an invasion happening without the deaths of large amounts (i.e. measured at least in percent) of local (!!) population. Perhaps you would like to point one out?
Oh, and while we're at it, didn't you just mention "voluntarily" in your previous paragraph? On which grounds do you refuse the right of the residents to decide who they want to belong to again?
"Voluntarily"? Lets look at few facts, and then smart people can make their own conclusions:
1. In Crimea the Pro-Russian party on the last elections in 2012 took ... 4!!!!% of votes. BTW the same party came to power with Russian military and "asked" Putin to take Crimea into Russia.
2. During the last sociological survey also in 2012, only 41% of people of Crimea wanted into Russia (only 10% of those apparently really wanted bad enough to vote for Pro-Russian party). Now how much was the "Referendum"? 96.36% was it? Find me with a single sociological survey with that amount of consensus, any one please: It is good to smoke? It is good to Drink Alcohol? Do you believe in God? Do you like candies? any survey please...
3. In case you didn't know it is a prison term in Ukraine (as probably most of the other countries in the world) to:
a) remove national symbols like flags from government buildings (not to mentioning placing Russian ones in their place);
b) encroach on territory of Ukraine (separatists);
c) attack or fuel racial or religion differences of people of Ukraine (Russian TV propaganda and pro-Russian activists);
4. Didn't Russian troops come to Crimea to "save" the Russians from banderol-fascists of Ukraine, why did they have to save them if no one died or was attacked?
5. Most of Ukrainian military in Donetsk and Lugansk still do not have a bulletproof vests even few months after the previous president was ousted. Do you really think they wanted to start fighting with 15k+ of fully armed and ready Russian troops in Crimea, if you watched Ukrainian TV at the time, you would know that government was doing everything in their power to avoid any possible conflicts and deaths in Crimea, so don't go around speaking as if there were no conflicts because 96% of people supported Russians.
There you can compare Ukrainian military with Russian in Crimea as the proof:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA3R48lx_Yk
6. Its funny how Russians often speak about freedom of speech and freedom of people to decide what they want, considering that in Russia you get into prison and get a pretty big fine (for Russians) if you go to any, especially non government allowed, antigovernment protest.
7. So what you are saying is that it is fine for say China (sorry Chinese people) to migrate a few hundred thousand, or even millions of its people into neighbor regions of neighbor countries, and then annex those territories because majority of the populace are Chinese? Then do the same again, and again, and again... Did you hear that Chinese government, get to it NOW!
If someone wants to live in another country, they sell all their property and move to the said country and buy a house there. Not storm a government building, change flag and scream that it belongs now to the other country.
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.
And you think that they haven't done it by now?
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
They haven't. When closed circuit technology was discovered by US after Cold War ended, most rocket scientists simply didn't believe it was real. To specify: they thought that closed circuit liquid fuel rocket booster technology was impossible to build. Until they tested the engine in their own facility, many of them thought they were being lied to about specifications of the engine in question.
To quote Lockheed Martin engineer: "This discovery made us ask some very uncomfortable questions about our own development processes".
This sort of stuff is not something you can just copy. This is what Chinese discovered when they copied Russian aircraft. They could copy the airframes and the engines but... engines would only last a few flights and then break down. Because building extremely complex components like jet and rocket engines requires extremely complex understanding of the process itself as well as material technology. Something you cannot acquire through simply copying it. And Russians are known to have destroyed many, many rockets and spent many years perfecting that particular rocket engine before it would actually work instead of suffering a catastrophic failure of some kind. It was that difficult to get to work right. This is not something that you can just grab and reverse engineer. You'll have to blow up quite a few rockets, or do some very difficult simulation work to get to work.
This is a problem of metallurgy, process technology and construction process itself. Things you cannot copy just by reverse engineering the end product.
You are making one HUGE mistake in your rant.
Russian engines are not cheaper. They are BETTER. Much better. So much better that Lockheed Martin engineers did not believe the specs they were presented when they were told about the engines and would not believe them until they test fired one engine in their own testing facility.
It wasn't even a generational gap. It was a technology that was deemed "impossible to build" by US rocket engineers.
So what you are saying is that it is fine for say China (sorry Chinese people) to migrate a few hundred thousand, or even millions of its people into neighbor regions of neighbor countries, and then annex those territories because majority of the populace are Chinese? Then do the same again, and again, and again... Did you hear that Chinese government, get to it NOW!
Well, I can think of another country that famously does this, but I don't want to stir up that shit-storm...
But your description isn't too terribly different from the CCP's actual policy in Tibet and Xinjiang, which has been to move large numbers of Han Chinese (which historically were not present in either province in large numbers, aside from relatively small occupying forces), and then use their presence as one of many justifications for denying self-determination to the Tibetans and Uighers. (It also encourages a sense of ownership among the remainder of Chinese who don't live their, but whose nationalism is an important factor in the survival of the CCP.) But neither China nor Russia has ever been shy about claiming the territory of other ethnic groups as "theirs", which is one reason why so many former Warsaw Pact nations have joined NATO (as Georgia and Ukraine wished to at one point). Not that this makes them unique among nations, of course.
A few months back I was watching a documentary where a bunch of Ukrainians were also calling it "the Ukraine".
Heh, even Glushko (the constructor of RD-170) himself couldn't believe that it was possible, that was the reason for the conflict with Korolyov. So Korolyov gave the engine development to an airplane engine designer who didn't know that it was impossible and NK-33 came out of this.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
It's "the Ukraine," simply, because it means "the edge", so call it what you want, I'll stick to what I know.
ad 1, possibly. So? (see next point.)
ad 2, the point is that once people started realizing that the newly formed "government" is going to abolish Russian as a language and treat the majority of the people of Crimea as if they were a small minority, the sentiments changed abruptly.
ad 3, a,b: what's your point again?
ad 3 c: Yes, see point 2. The putschist government did exactly that acting illegal and without consent of the people.
ad 4: First, it's Bandera, not banderol. Second, they came to secure their assets and were allowed to do so (i.e. perimeter around their bases and up to 20k soldiers).
ad 5: They do have bulletproof vests, sponsored by EU & US; I don't watch Ukrainian TV, I get my information from the ground; please explain, why so many military units defected. Lugansk and Donetsk are not Crimea.
ad 6: It's just pointing out the hypocrisy of the EU, US and new "government". What Russians do in their own country is their business.
ad 7: It's fine, if they did it 200+ years ago. Why do people keep forgetting that Crimea used to be a part of Russia? Seems convenient.
I dunno, I feel uncomfortable with the whole "invasion" term.
Difficult to put it in US terms, but imagine, if the Canadian government would decide to revoke the official status of the French language (or the other way around); I guess they'd be pretty fucking pissed as well.
Georgia is a whole different story altogether: South Ossetia "declared independence from Georgia in 1990" and Apsny/Abhazia is similar.
The point is that if an ethnic majority of a region wants independence, they should be able to attain it, isn't that what democracy is all about? The right to self-determination? It makes little difference anyway, because eventually we will all be globalized (economically and politically) or perish.
Not even close to true. Russia has a small set of rp-1/lox engines that are better. But our lh2/lox engines are superior to Russian engines. Regardless, the reason why l-mart went with rd-180 was cost not because it was better. They wanted to beat Boeing's prices, which having the first stage built in nations that manipulate their money vs. $, does make it cheaper. And that was decided by management, not the engineers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So many things wrong. American lh2 engines are superior engines to rp-1 engines in nearly every major spec, save 2: fuel tank size and costs.
the reason why l-mart executives chose Russian engines was pure costs against Boeing.
now ula has lost nearly everything except for us gov launches, all because they are subsidizing Russian space program.
However, musk has not focused on the best specs, nor just 1 customer. They are focused on being the cheapest and safest launch vehicle in the world. That is nearly all other space programs are afraid of spaceX. They are looking at economics instead of a pissing contest.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Come on man, the data was already cherry picked.
And I mentioned the khanate already and the fact we could keep iterating this. I think you are reaching on this one.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If we allow that kind of election to stand, then there is no country on earth which couldn't be legally nibbled away from the edges. It showed a complete disrespect for international laws regarding sovereign boundaries.
Besides it was a sham "heads I win, tails you lose" election in terms of what you could vote for.
The ballot questions were :
According to a format of the ballot paper, published on the parliament's website, the first question will ask: "Are you in favour of the reunification of Crimea with Russia as a part of the Russian Federation?"
The second asks: "Are you in favour of restoring the 1992 Constitution and the status of Crimea as a part of Ukraine?"
I.e. " Do you want to be part of russia, or not part of Ukraine".
And the icing on the cake was of course plainclothes russian soldiers on the street beating non russian looking voters, and despite voters intimidated and staying home areas reported up to 123% voting records and allowing people with russian passports to vote.
---
Now if you want to talk oil wars- I'm all over it with you. What bush did was shocking and in my opinion was in part to "out do" his hold man who had the wisdom to stop. It also cost close to 2 trillion dollars which *should* be reflected in the price of oil but isn't so it acts as a "subsidy" to big oil to suppress alternative energy. But two wrong's don't make a right.
I'm not a jingoist. America (and any major power) is going to have black marks on it's record.
Taken on it's own- as a grab for a black sea port, the move is a black mark. I'm more worried about the internal politics of russia. They are jailing those who dissent and are building themselves a very nice echo chamber. If they keep this up, combined with rising nationalism, they are going to keep going until they start world war 3. Fortunately, russia's weak economy and fleeing capital from their militarism seems to be reigning them in for now.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Educate yourself on the issue. US has no closed circuit engines. At all. Closed circuit engines are, by their very nature, significantly more efficient than open circuit which is what US uses.
The engines that you call "superior" are in fact vastly inferior but are designed for a different task, which is heavy lifting with just a handful of engines. Russian engine in question is designed to be used in combination of up to 30 engines per rocket for extremely heavy lifting, whereas US decided to go with 4-5 engines per rocket. Hence the engines are in fact bigger and produce more lift, but are far less efficient and vastly inferior when compared to Russian engines used as specified in similar task.
You are viewing the problem in the capitalist light of "if we have the money, we can build better technology".
This angle has no roots in reality. This was shown in F-35 which attempted to implement one reverse engineered and one licensed piece of technology from Russians developed in 70s and 90s respectively.
In spite of massive cost overruns, they still don't work. Throwing money at the problem simply didn't solve it, because complex technological solutions cannot be in fact solved with money. Instead they need to be solved with human excellence, which money often cannot buy.
Huh? The 1992 constitution of Crimea sees it as an autonomous republic of Ukraine. Maybe You, I or both of us are misunderstanding something here.
Regarding the Russian passports, I guess it has something to do with dual citizenships, i.e.:
It's also pretty much plausible and conceivable that the passport was used only for ID purposes and they had lists of eligible voters beforehand (at least that's the way it works in Germany: you just have to present a valid ID and be on the list).
And, re: "beating non russian looking voters", regardless of whether it actually happened (source?), there were not too many of those:
(Crimean Tatars & ethnic groups in Crimea).
Agreed. /.), and being a semi-autonomous region (e.g. unlike Kosovo), they made use of their right to do so.
What I'm really trying to achieve here, is to cut through the thick fog of propaganda (from all sides) and get at the core of the issue (i.e. discrimination of a large part of the population by a (then) unelected government).
If I put myself in their shoes, I can totally understand the wish to distance themselves from a seemingly oppressive regime (not everyone welcomes their new overlords as we do here on
In addition, there were international observers present during the referendum.
And, as a last one, (internal Russian politics notwithstanding,) this is long but raises some interesting points: http://original.antiwar.com/ju...
Source for the beating and for allowing people with russian passports to vote was the huffington post. The article says one of their reporters (who didn't have dual citizenship) was allowed to vote.
It's often derided as a "liberal" source.
The article explained that the "1992 constitution phrase" was actually a "gotcha" phrase that was inserted intentionally. Otherwise it would have simply said, "Vote B to remain a part of Ukraine".
Sort of like when you vote for "bonds to provide free buses" without realizing that bonds *require* taxes. So when you vote for bonds, you are actually voting for taxes.
The propaganda is a problem. It's pretty think here. I really don't see America as warmongering right now tho and I'm concerned that Russia is turning nationalistic in a way that's really dangerous.
Not that I can do anything about it except yammer on message boards.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Well, that's what it meant, except with more autonomy (e.g. with the ability to keep Russian as an official language inside Crimea).
Huffington Post has a pretty one-sided narrative of the events from what I've read in recent months. They also miss a lot of information.
Dito... :-/
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.