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Russia Abandons Super-Rocket Designed To Compete With SLS
schwit1 writes Russia has decided to abandon an expensive attempt to build an SLS-like super-rocket and will instead focus on incremental development of its smaller but less costly Angara rocket. "Facing significant budgetary pressures, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, has indefinitely postponed its ambitious effort to develop a super-heavy rocket to rival NASA's next-generation Space Launch System, SLS. Instead, Russia will focus on radical upgrades of its brand-new but smaller Angara-5 rocket which had its inaugural flight in Dec. 2014, the agency's Scientific and Technical Council, NTS, decided on Thursday, March 12." For Russia's space industry, it appears that these budgetary pressures have been a blessing in disguise. Rather than waste billions on an inefficient rocket for which there is no commercial demand — as NASA is doing with SLS (under orders from a wasteful Congress) — they will instead work on further upgrades of Angara, much like SpaceX has done with its Falcon family of rockets. This will cost far less, is very efficient, and provides them a better chance to compete for commercial launches that can help pay for it all. And best of all, it offers them the least costly path to future interplanetary missions, which means they might actually be able to make those missions happen. To quote the article again: "By switching upper stages of the existing Angara from kerosene to the more potent hydrogen fuel, engineers might be able to boost the rocket's payload from current 25 tons to 35 tons for missions to the low Earth orbit. According to Roscosmos, Angara-A5V could be used for piloted missions to the vicinity of the Moon and to its surface." In a sense, the race is now on between Angara-A5V and Falcon Heavy.
when your President steals $200 billion from your country's treasure and steals it for himself.
Sucks to be you, Russia!
Everybody back to beating each other over the head with clubs. Fight over scraps, stupid hairless monkeys. Don't forget to die on your pitiful lump of rock!
fuck that, bigger is better
roscosmos consumes 35 tons of grain alcohol weekly
SpaceX found that hydrogen fuel is not an improvement over methane when you include all the extra complexity (and weight) of dealing with super cold and very small atoms, both resulting in brittle metals. SpaceX does intend to switch to methane, which is a small improvement over kerosene, and unlike kerosene does not leave difficult to clean residue in pipes and engine parts.
we get to launch rockets without having to have a profit requirement for it!
You say that as if it were an advantage. Interesting.
That's why the US gets to launch big expensive, and awesome science projects like Hubble, Cassini, Voyager, Apollo, etc.., while Russia is stuck with shitty Space-X sized rockets that only has commercial appeal.
NASA doesn't currently have a way, aside from the commercial launchers, to launch those various probes you mentioned. NASA doesn't even have the capability to launch crew to the International Space Station.
I love how the Russian "SLS" version had four boosters. Someone over there must play Kerbal Space Program.
just watch.
The government should not be run for profit. The government should be an alternative to markets, provide a safe haven for those who want to do things because they're interested in advancing knowledge, not selling something. Space exploration is in the General Welfare, not only for the 1%.
Translation: "Russia can't even afford the power points for it's super heavy booster, so it's going to concentrate on the development of an unproven booster that budget crunches have already delayed for over two decades."
Just finished Ukraine, blasting into Russia now.
Wow... Was the summary written by Putin? (Hello Mods: The author is even Russian!)
There may be no current commercial need for the SLS, but you can bet that it will appear once the system launches successfully a few times.
Also, I'm sure the US military and NASA will be excited to be able to launch heavier and heaver things into space and stop being reliant on Russian launch technology, especially with the Russians dusting off their 1950's era bombers to test NATO defenses.
Putin is indeed cocky, but our Congress takes the cake.
Why do we have to launch big loads all at once? Launch a booster first, and then have the payload rendezvous with it in orbit. It may take some R&D and practice to get right, but it seems the more logical way to handle big projects instead of supporting bigass rockets and launch platforms that are not used enough to pay their rent.
Plus, having a spare in place is easier with commodity rockets.
Table-ized A.I.
while Russia is stuck with shitty Space-X sized rockets that only has commercial appeal.
Russia regularly launches Proton-M, which has a Shuttle-like LEO payload capability. With the exception of Apollo, it should have been able to launch any of those things, and at a much lower cost. The problem for the Russians is that they hoped that Angara would be cheaper than the Proton-M. In retrospect, achieving that turns out to be quite problematic. Angara's saving grace is that it is - yet again - a military rocket, and unlike Energia, it's a military rocket for which they have no replacement (at least not after the Proton gets retired). It could have commercial appeal, but if Falcon Heavy works out well, which is very, very likely, few people are going to bother with Angara. Between ITAR, costs, transportation issues, general shunning of doing business with Russia these day, etc., I'm not sure there's a lot of potential. It may very well end up just launching scores of spy sats.
Ezekiel 23:20
The government should not be run for profit.
But that's not an argument in favor of wasteful projects (when cheaper alternatives are available), I hope.
Ezekiel 23:20
please blast harder.
Angara is not a military rocket.
The government should keep it's dirty claws out of profit and let private enterprise work without having an 800lb gorilla breathing down it's neck. We want people who understand a market selling products, not a horse judge who happened to sleep in the same room as someone who later became a powerful government figure.
A government's role is to act for citizens when they are taken advantage of, not to fleece them for profit with no alternative.
See state owned power utilities regulated by the state that owns them for an example - eg. price rises of around 500% over 8 years and no alternative other than putting a solar panel on your roof.
That's because they are a little startup without the resources to deal with such complexity and not a very large org that already has experience using that fuel.
Yes hydrogen has many issues, like the embrittlement problem that's been known about and dealt with since the 1940s, but it's a tradeoff that some can do already but is uneconomic for others to go near.
What SLS can do that other rockets can't?
I am not one who would stand in the way of progress, but no matter how I look at SLS, that thing just does not make any sense (and also cents) to me
If anyone can convince me that SLS is indeed needed, please do ... I am all ears, ... and eyes
The gov't could at least lose less money if it issued its own currency (beyond just coins) instead of borrowing its money supply from privately owned banks.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Of course it isn't, comrade! That's an imperialist lie!
Ezekiel 23:20
I'd think that hydrogen is somewhat uneconomical for launch vehicles also because it generally gets used in upper stages, so you need more different pieces of launch pad infrastructure, and all-importantly, at least two types of engines. The fact that some other companies are not "little startups" still doesn't protect them from the effect of economies of scale. (And if you want to suggest unifying on hydrogen, check out the boondoggle named "Delta IV".) Look at how hideously expensive the RL-10 has ended up due to restricted production, and rejoice in the wisdom of Falcon 9 designers (which, besides unifying propulsion, gave them a landing level of thrust achievable in the first stage almost for free).
It also doesn't help much that when hydrogen does get used in launch vehicles, those upper stages are optimized for high energy missions and therefore end up on average more expensive (because they're built to be super-lightweight) even if all you want is to get some standardized payload to LEO. I'd really reserve hydrogen for the future, purely in-space vehicles, especially the large ones (with presumably improved volume/mass ratio for the hydrogen tanks that wouldn't involve exorbitant costs to achieve in smaller tanks, giving hydrolox better economies of scale). And even that only after some important technological progress - besides vastly improved Isp of up to almost 500 s, the lower pumping pressures and potentially much greater engine lifetime could come in really handy.
To sum it up, perhaps we're not doing those missions yet where hydrogen would actually be decisively beneficial from the economy point of view. Anywhere up to LEO, hydrocarbons win, especially with good engines, and even direct launch to GTO probably isn't a sufficient excuse.
Ezekiel 23:20
Hmm, just printing more money as needed...
Seems to me that's been tried a few times in history. Worked pretty well for Germany in the 1920's and -30's, as I recall....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
And the Fed's so-called "quantitative easing" is different from that... how?
It appears that the debt-backed money system we've been using since 1971 (when Nixon closed the gold window) has run itself out to its logical conclusion: an exponential explosion of debt as we approach the vertical asymptote.
I'm not arguing for a gold standard; a fiat system can work just fine as long as the quantity is controlled sensibly, as you imply. But I don't think that ceding the "issuing power" to private banks is a good solution either. For example, the Bank of North Dakota strikes a good balance. It doesn't issue currency per se, but it does handle all the state's revenues, and makes loans (which is essentially the same thing as issuing currency) to local banks and some other institutional borrowers. And the interest on those loans goes into ND's coffers instead of being paid to, say, Goldman Sachs.
So, contrary to what the GP said, ND is in fact "making a profit" from all this, which is a distinct benefit to all its citizens.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Skylab cost ~$2.6 billion, ~$11 billion 2015. The space station Freedom was expected to cost $8 billion in 1984, maybe $24 billion in 2015 dollars. The current cost has been over $75 billion.The ISS weighs 400 tons. The extra design, and assembly costs of modules outweigh the cost of bigger, heavier, cheaper modules, and just using a big rocket.
... Russia being in space. But given their conduct, I think they should have as limited capabilities as possible.
Russia is out of control and entirely unrepentant. If they have fewer capabilities their frequently bat shit crazy leaders will have more limited aspirations.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
This "four booter rocket" configuration is not new to the russians. It was introduced by Sergei Korlev http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... already in the 50:s, with the R7 line of rockets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... . In fact, it was one such R7 carrier rocket (8K71PS) that launched Sputnik-1 (and -2) into orbit. The detachment of the booster rockts were such a common sight, that it got its own name: Korolev cross https://www.google.se/search?q....
The government should not be run for profit.
Profit is a strong indication that you are generating more value than you cost. If you aren't generating a profit, there should be a good reason why. You don't provide such a reason. Let's look in more detail.
The government should be an alternative to markets, provide a safe haven for those who want to do things because they're interested in advancing knowledge, not selling something.
First of all, no. There's no "should" here. Second, who gets this safe haven and who doesn't? We can't have everyone sucking up money just because they're more interested in advancing knowledge than in the alternatives. Someone has to generate that tax revenue in order for the scheme to work.
Then there's the matter of unintended consequences. If you put up this scheme, then someone will game it for profit. In practice, there's no real yardstick for what "advancing knowledge" means, so it's been long exploited by universities and businesses.
Space exploration is in the General Welfare, not only for the 1%.
One near universal problem that NASA has long contended with is that space exploration is just not that valuable to the US public. I don't mean just perceived to be not that valuable - public perception has always been lukewarm towards space activities. But truly not that valuable. It doesn't materially change the human condition to know a little more about our universe. And the vague intangibles which NASA supposedly brings, like inspiration to go into the STEM fields, could be achieved for a fraction of the cost by Earth-bound activities.
Finally, NASA is just terrible at its assigned role. It might not need to be profitable, but it certainly needs to be getting an order of magnitude more activity and exploration out of the money it currently spends.
The government needs a frame in which it can legally operate. For instance you don't want the government to get into iron mining, steel making and knife making just so it can run hospitals. It's fine for a government-run hospital to buy surgical knives from private companies.
The horror example where this separation from government subsidies never happened is the airline industry, where you have two giant corporations, Boeing and Airbus, that leech billions off of various governments.
Yes, but in addition to that the trade-offs are inherently different for re-usable rockets. Embrittlement is probably a pretty big problem if you intend to re-use your fuel tank many times, like SpaceX intends to.
If SpaceX fails to make their second stage re-usable I would not be surprised to see them switch to hydrogen for that stage at some point down the line.
I have to agree with the summary, this could be a blessing in disguise for the Russians given the right future economic conditions. We're burning enough money here in the US just on DEVELOPMENT of SLS that we could launch the mass of a WWII aircraft carrier into orbit on commercial launchers in todays launch market let alone the economies of scale you would get if we tried to do so. And the "$500 Million" per launch claim that NASA is putting out is hysterical, It will probably cost at least $1.5 Billion per launch not including development. If our intention is to make space access more reasonable there simply is no good reason for a SHLV at this time, we can do everything and more with standard LV's and if we get enough yearly flights economies of scale and competition will kick in and help space access costs even more. SHLVs are currently only good for shoveling massive amounts of money into the bank accounts of a few well connected defense contractors.
And the Fed's so-called "quantitative easing" is different from that... how?
It is different because the Fed is independent, and not subjected to short term political pressure.
a large trampoline instead?
For Russia's space industry, it appears that these budgetary pressures have been a blessing in disguise. Rather than waste billions on an inefficient rocket for which there is no commercial demand — as NASA is doing with SLS (under orders from a wasteful Congress)
samzenpus is using this article to present his opinions as facts while completely ignoring the valid reasons for building the SLS. The SLS is not going to be used for launching communication satellites or taking tourists to space. SLS is not a commercial project but a scientific and exploratory project to enable mankind to escape low earth orbit while preserving the U.S. space launch capabilities.
LOL!! The Fed may be independent of gov't but it's not independent of corporate plutocracy. Indeed, this is the crucial struggle of our times, wresting control of our politics and our economy from these fat-cat SOBs.
Get thee hence to Wolf-PAC.com and pitch in to help save our democracy from these blood-suckers.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
It may be flamebait, but that doesn't make it any less true.
I say we clone Soyuz 11 and give Putin a ride!
I forget which scientist was asked by a general if it had "military use, if it could protect America?" and he replied "no, but it will make America worth protecting."
This is the reason we should do things. Not for profit, for material gain, for defense, or any other flimsy reason. It should be done because it is beneficial to us all, because it advances us all as humans.
My mistake was to post that at night just before the Russians were waking up. They don't like to hear the truth about their dictator.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
More dependable than anyone else - by about .2%, much celebrated by the clueless, irrelevant in the real world.
Proton uses toxic hypergolic fuel. Energia was too expensive. That's why they made Angara. It's a cost-effective replacement for Proton.
It's not an ICBM like Proton. Angara was designed to launch satellites. Nothing more.
LEO is about to become useless when a few more large pieces of space junk break up and collide with other pieces to cause the junk cascade that pollutes LEO such that we can't either orbit in it or launch through.
Don't take my word for it: go find the research. We're SO close to screwed that it's truly funny/scary/weird.
Only I'm not laughing...
It's a military rocket in the same sense that Atlas V and Delta IV are military rockets - they were commissioned by the military, for military needs, paid for with military funding (and therefore less likely to get cancelled in countries like US or Russia). I never claimed it was a missile.
Ezekiel 23:20
It was conceived as presumably cost-effective. It remains to be seen if this will actually be the case.
Ezekiel 23:20
That article is old news.
Aborted launches happen all the time in the industry. Let alone in a new launch vehicle.
The Angara A5 vehicle they are talking about in that article was successfully launched last December.
They could use a better second stage for the rocket (i.e. the A7 version) but what they have is working fairly well. It would have been ready earlier if they didn't keep stalling the funding all the time. But it is ready now.
All that's needed is for them to finish the construction of their new launch site at Vostochny and Proton can be killed.
What do you mean by "old news"? So the opinion voiced at the end of the article saying that (despite initial expectations) sustained cost of Angara will most likely be higher than sustained cost of Proton can change within half a year? And A7 is not A5 with two extra boosters, it requires a redesigned (different) core (meaning one more production line) and cannot launch from A5 pads.
Ezekiel 23:20
Why are you pushing this bullshit:
The Wolf-PAC Resolution does not contain specific amendment language because we truly want to hear all sides and solutions at the amendments convention. We think the amendment should contain these core values:
"Corporations are not people. They have none of the Constitutional rights of human beings. Corporations are not allowed to give money to any politician, directly or indirectly. No politician can raise over $100 from any person or entity. All elections must be publicly financed."
*Note: The finished legislation will be worded differently and have to account for inflation, etc. This is simply to point legislators in the right direction and make sure the final amendment accomplishes the goals we have outlined here.
http://www.wolf-pac.com/28th
What part of CAMPAIGNING (not "elections" - lying-ass motherfuckers) do you want to publicly fund? Keep in mind that ELECTIONS are already funded publicly. Wolf-PAC is about coercive financing of:
1) robocalls and telemarketing
2) junk mail
3) MOAR commercials (radio, TV, internet, etc)
4) flyers littering the roads
Funny thing about "3" is that I already block it but if they want me to be the sucker paying* for it, will it be claimed that I'm "stealing" from myself?
Keep in mind, I have no dog in the 'corporate charter' fight. I'd be happy if we stopped issuing these limited liability monstrosities for non-public purposes (e.g., developing nukes to fight a war would be a public purpose that might require limited liability - selling me a burrito ... not so much).
Keep in mind, I don't care if you require elected officials to be chaste and impoverished (although that would require a constitutional amendment).
I draw the line at the government directing all the money - or even some of it - that is spent to determine how we run the government. Wolf-PAC is pro-statist and anti-democratic. It amazes me that so many people have fallen for it. "Why?", you might ask. It is because "Corporations are not people." True but that doesn't imply the true goals of the WOLF-PAC which is government control of how the government is selected.
Why do people promote this without a text of the amendment? Do you really believe they will take in millions just to "hear all sides and solutions at the amendments convention"? They want a convention and your money without publicly disclosing amendment text. Dumb-ass mofo...
* I pay 6-figures in tax (likely over $300,000 as a business owner)
If the price of oil stays low, look for an announcement next year they are abandoning Angara and contracting it all out to SpaceX.
So? I mean seriously, what is that elementary school level reply meant to accomplish?
There are also plans to retrofit the KVTK LOX/LH2 second stage into A5. The whole A7 may or may not happen. It doesn't matter as A5 with KVTK would have more performance than Proton.
The cost of handling hypergolics can be quite high. That is one reason why everyone is moving away from them. The costs for manufacturing the actual rocket may be higher but I kind of doubt it. Angara A5 is manufactured with more modern tools and it has less engines and parallel stages than Proton. Once it goes into full production the cost per unit is bound to be lower.
I'll restate my point in a different way - a small startup is going to be spread thin if they have multiple engines while an established org may already have had them for years.
Is an ambitious project wasteful simply because there is a cheaper alternative? It seems like developing a super-heavy rocket might have benefits other than simply getting things to space cheaper than we could yesterday.
Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain?
Is an ambitious project wasteful simply because there is a cheaper alternative?
What leads you to believe that there is something - anything - "ambitious" about recycling 1960s and 1970s technology? Wouldn't "ambitious" mean, I don't know...stuff like funding R&D for high-Isp pulse detonation engines?
It seems like developing a super-heavy rocket might have benefits other than simply getting things to space cheaper than we could yesterday.
You may not have noticed, but getting things into space cheaper is the greatest problem of all spaceflight at the moment.
Ezekiel 23:20
I believe the KVTK is not "a retrofit". It was planned for Angara A5 all along. There are simply different versions of it (or rather, there were plans for different versions), just like there are different versions of the DCSS and the Centaur. Regarding the costs, yes, it makes sense to think that the A5 offers a lot of potential for cost reductions in terms of modern manufacturing. At the same time, the engines are likely to be more expensive than the RD-275s (which, to my understanding, are basically dirt cheap) even if Angara needs fewer of them. All in all, I agree that switching to Angara is definitely a step in the right direction, but to assume implicitly that it will be cheaper than a launcher with very well established manufacturing and operation any time soon seems wildly optimistic at the moment. It will fall down from its current cost, but to what asymptotic level - that is the question to ask.
Ezekiel 23:20
Deep space research and rhus launch equipment is not a profit project yet and might become so in a few decades. In the mean time it is the role of governments to join together I such huge and costly projects. Had the US amd Russia and China been buddies along with EU and Canada,all of the players could have had a piece of this deep space project but human primates being what they are, cannot agree jot to compete, fight threaten and otherwise waste time and resources. Okay but on to the other topic that slipped into the comments which is about power companies private and state run.
I live in Canada and we used to have a public electrical utilities. It was sold off to some US company. Our monthly charges are now broken into delivery line and a separate company,for energy costs. We pay at least five times what we did before. Do not be deceived by those fools who declare that public costs are always higher. Here we were being screwed by corporations who get away with lower taxes and a LAISSEZ faire provincial government in Alberta who gave away our birthright to foreigners. Some things work better as a private entrepreneurial system such as commercial entities such as SpaceX, a terrific innovative company but other things like running a power grid needs a wider net, a public one. One size does not fit all. It is childish frankly to think that private for profit is always better..yeah? Like the US medical establishment? Better? Don't make me laugh..ditto,for private insurance and power companies and the like. Ideologically driven economies are run by the 1 percent. Is this familiar?
The RD-275 may be dirt cheap as you say but those engines also use a bipropellant staged combustion cycle so I don't expect the parts count to be that different..
At most it has a simpler ignition because it runs on hypergolics.