“Certainly the NDAA places future restrictions on the use of the Russian engines for national security space applications. Our application is in civil space. There’s a long history of U.S.-Russian cooperation in civil space, dating back to Apollo-Soyuz in the 1970s at the height of the Cold War. Since our immediate objective is in civil space supporting the International Space Station, it’s got a slightly different twist or perspective than supporting national security space. NASA already relies on cooperation with its Russian partner in other ways to execute the ISS program [including] crew transport. Certainly it would not make sense to restrict the use of engines manufactured in Russia on a program that’s already inherently dependent on cooperation between the United States and Russia.”
In other words, civil space isn’t important. We cooperated with the Soviets during the Cold War, but we were never dependent on them. I assume this means more INKSNA waivers.
They roll the dice. They take their chances. This shows as much sensitivity as purchasing surplus V2s from Hitler.
Yeah, it’s not like a question of Mr. Putin being mad at us and not selling us those rocket engines. It appears to be a question of long there will be a Mr. Putin and a Russian Federation as we know it to either not sell us engines, sell us engines, or encourage us to purchase trampolines.
I hear they are going broke really fast, and it is not like in the Soviet days where they had their own version of an economy and an international trading network.
IMHO, Russia has a great deal in common with Middle eastern petro-states; its economy is almost entirely based in oil and gas exports. Its also, due to climate, geography, geology, taxes, and corruption, inclined to have very high production costs. Russia does okay when oil is $120 a barrel, but under $100, it starts to feel the pinch.
The reason they hiked interest rates to 17%, IMHO, is because at current oil prices, their economic prospects are dire indeed, and thus money was leaving the country. The high rates are an attempt to stem the flow, but they’ll have the effect of hurting the economy.
My guess; Russia is in for a very nasty ride, and Putin’s days may be numbered..
What concerns me is that regimes with their backs against the wall often see a forign crisis and/or war as a no-downside proposition; if they do nothing they’re out of office anyway, so why not roll the dice? (The Galtieri regime in Argentina and the Falklands war are a classic case in point).
There’s nothing wrong with trusting the Russians. Just ask the Ukrainians; there were all sorts concerns when Ukraine became independent but Russia retained sovereignty of key areas of Sevastopol. There were concerns that Russia couldn’t be trusted and would take the entire Sevastopol region away from Ukrainian Crimea.
However, these fears proved unfounded, because Russia, instead, took the rest of Crimea too, and is now attempting the same with Eastern Ukraine. (Which happens to include the city where the Antares first stage is produced).
What could possibly go wrong?
OT, but fascinating: http://www.spacex.com/news/2014/12/16/x-marks-spot-falcon-9-attempts-ocean-platform-landing
“During previous attempts, we could only expect a landing accuracy of within 10km. For this attempt, we’re targeting a landing accuracy of within 10 meters.”
10km? I don’t recall hearing about that before!:) I had kind of thought, “When will these fuddy-duddies in the government chill and let SpaceX land their first stage back at the launch site?” A 10km error makes me a lot more sympathetic.
I would love to see this work.
Did I miss a report that showed that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Antares design that requires moving away from the AJ-26? The only thing I can think of that makes sense is that Orbital was getting ready to do a redesign anyway and the explosion just accelerated the process. Is this right?
How is it that a single accident can mess up Orbital’s business model so badly? Is this basically a PR problem, or was there something fundamentally wrong with the risk model? Does this mean that SpaceX is more vulnerable to a failure than would otherwise be the case?
The thing that was wrong with the Antares design was that it used AJ-26s. OSC decided that they couldn’t rely on them any more, after the turbopump failure. It was never a good idea to use engines that were four decades old.
I was kind of surprised they managed to do the launches they did with them in the first place. If the engines were dirt cheap and are in the US already why not use them?
Not that those engines had a good launch history to begin with *cough* N1 *cough*.
I have to comment on Mr. Grabe’s sense of history. Apollo Soyuz was NOT at the height of the Cold War. Apollo-Soyuz was explicitly an expression of the Nixon-Kissinger detente policy with the Soviet Union. In 1986, Reagan had rejected Gorbachev’s call to cancel SDI, and McDonnell Douglas put out a great ad featuring the new Soviet Mir space station. Five years later the world had changed and NASA signed a commercial contract to fly Norm Thagard to ride on a Soyuz to Mir.
It is true that the U.S. and Russia are inextricably linked in operating the current ISS. It’s also true that Commercial Crew is (finally) being well-funded so we aren’t dependent on Russia for rides to the ISS that we paid to build.
The RD-181 (or 193) is probably a great engine. It really was Orbital’s only logical choice. But I wouldn’t count on Congress passing nonproliferation waivers so Orbital can fly cargo missions when Boeing and Sierra Nevada are offering services on Atlas Vs with shiny new BE-4 engines.