19 thoughts on “Russian Rocket Development”

  1. It’s probably not viable for them to compete with a reusable F9, unless they massively cut corners, which would negatively impact reliability.

    It’s worth remembering that Roscosmos got there first with Proton. During an unarguably earthshaking mission, they managed to RTLS both stages back in 2013, something which SpaceX has yet to achieve.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ5__1PPgNQ

    1. Yes, but what the rest of the world never learned, let alone their next commercial launch customer, they hosed those stages down, pressed down some of the dents, painted over the burn marks, and then they reused them!

      1. Yes, I think they did… the landing was a tad rough, perhaps because the engines cut off a few moments before touchdown, so it might have taken them a bit to get it ready for relaunch.

        I must commend the Russians for innovation. Who knew that RTLS was as easy as rotating the rate-gyro assembly 180 degrees during installation?

        I think that re-use flight might have been the successful delivery of a payload to Siberia-synchronous solar orbit?

      1. I only told the truth. 🙂
        That’s definitely RTLS (Return to launch site). And certainly, it was earthshaking. 🙂

    3. Do the Russians not use any sort of self destruct mechanisms on their launch vehicles? That Proton looked like it just did it’s own thing until it flew into the ground.

      1. The Russians don’t use range safety flight termination systems.

        What they can do, theoretically, is issue a manual engine shutdown command. Then, the rocket just crashes. This is especially dangerous due to many of their rockets using hydrazine as fuel.

        My guess on the Proton vid; the engines shut down due to stack breakup rupturing fuel lines.

  3. Okay, the gist is that they are moving to terminate Proton production, allowing them to refocus on Angara.

    Angara will cost a lot more than Proton, so, the Russians are moving to a launch vehicle that they’ll rarely be able to launch due to cost, thereby pricing themselves out of most of that class of the launch business.

    I do not see this ending well for them.

    1. They’re rcognizing reality and moving to a national security only payload approach. Their commercial will be dead in five to ten years.

  5. I had no idea that Russia was already fully out of commercial launch, but this item from TASS seems to say they are;
    http://tass.com/science/1019425
    “”Five launches are envisaged for 2019. Five launches of manned and resupply ships, and also of a nodal module are planned for 2020,”

    Five launches per year. From Russia.

    1. This year they are only launching two non Russian payloads. A few months ago they launched a group of nanosats, in a couple of months they are going to launch an Egyptian spy satellite. The article you read was probably talking only about their civilian launches. They launch five or ten military satellites every year.

  7. One primary motivation for space flight has always been national prestige. John Kennedy was actually pretty straightforward about this in both of his famous Moon speeches. Thanks to foolish political decisions, by the time we finally get our act together, it will have been eight, perhaps nine, years since the United States had the ability to put people in to orbit. During all this time, we have had to rely on Russia to carry our people to our own space station, and the Russians have not hesitated to lord this national humiliation over us.
    Frankly, it gives me great satisfaction that, now that we are finally redeveloping a manned spaceflight capability, the the Russians are almost losing space capability altogether. I like the fact that, while Russia has tried and failed to develop the Proton Medium, withdrawn the original Proton from service, developed the Angara which nobody, not even they, want to use, and completely lost the commercial spaceflight market they used to dominate, the United States has developed the Falcon rockets, and will, over the next several years, introduce the New Glenn, the BFR, and perhaps the New Armstrong. I like the fact that, over the next several years, the United States may introduce as many as six manned spacecraft, all much more advanced than the Soyuz, and one of which, again the BFR, will make Soyuz look like a biplane. Yes, after the last seven humiliating years, I like these developments very much. Trampolines indeed.

    1. And it was all due to moving away from a Russian style launch program and embracing a more free enterprise based approach. Will it sink in with the marxist sciency types or porkists?

Comments are closed.