One of the main November news for the domestic cosmonautics was the contract, canceled by Roscosmos, for the production of Angara-1.2 rockets, which were supposed to launch communication satellites of the Gonets system into space. The corporation has decided that the Soyuz-2 launch vehicle will deliver the satellites into orbit. At the same time, the start of serial production of Angara missiles was once again postponed, now their production should begin in Omsk at the facilities of the Polyot production association in 2023.
Rocket "Angara". 25 years - no progress
The contract for the construction of Angara missiles worth more than two billion rubles, which was signed between the Khrunichev Center and Roscosmos on July 25, 2019, was terminated on October 30, which in some way became a real sensation. Earlier, the Russian state space corporation hoped to launch the Gonets-M communication satellites into space, the launches were to take place in 2021 using the Angara-1.2 launch vehicle. Now Roskosmos says that the launches will be carried out with the involvement of the Soyuz-2 carrier rocket, this rocket is fully adapted for the launch of the Gonets communication satellites, so there should be no problems with their launch into space.
As reported by RIA Novosti with reference to Oleg Khimochko, First Deputy General Director of Satellite System Gonets, the company currently has 9 Gonets communication satellites in storage, three of which are planned to be launched into space at the end of this year. assistance of the rocket "Rokot". The remaining six communications satellites will be launched into orbit using Soyuz-2 launch vehicles adapted for their launch. At the same time, it is not known until the end that the launches will take place in 2020 or 2021.
Experts say that one of the reasons for the refusal of Roscosmos from Angara to carry out these launches is the chronic lag behind the schedule for the release of a new family of missiles in Omsk at the facilities of the Polyot NPO. The official reason for the refusal of the previously concluded contract was not named at Roscosmos, but they confirmed that they are still interested in the production of a new Russian rocket, the development of which has been going on with varying degrees of intensity for almost a quarter of a century. According to the plans of the state corporation, the deployment of serial production of the Angara universal missile modules in Omsk remains a priority task. According to a press release from Roscosmos, the heavy version of the Angara rocket should replace the Proton-M launch vehicle in 2024.
This news once again raises concern for the Russian project of a modular-type rocket with new oxygen-kerosene engines. Work on the Angara family of missiles capable of launching cargo weighing from 2 to 37.5 tons into space began in Russia back in 1995. Almost 25 years have passed since then, the project costs for all this time could reach three billion dollars. Estimates of the project cost vary, but it is difficult to calculate them adequately, including due to the long development period. As a result, the rocket, which has long been called "the hope of national cosmonautics", flew only two times. The first launch of the new rocket took place on July 9, 2014 (Angara-1.2PP - the first launch). It is noteworthy that this was a test suborbital flight of a light version of the rocket. The flight took place normally, the rocket covered 5700 km, reaching the Kura training ground in Kamchatka. The second and last flight of the "Angara" at the moment took place on December 23, 2014, it also took place in the normal mode. A heavy-class rocket "Angara-5" launched a payload model weighing just over two tons into a geostationary orbit with an altitude of 35, 8 thousand kilometers.
This is where all the successes of the new Russian modular rocket end. For comparison, the development cost of Angara's direct competitor at this stage - the American Falcon 9 launch vehicle manufactured by the private company SpaceX - cost Elon Musk about $ 850 million. Of which, according to data released in 2014 by SpaceX, $ 450 million was the company's own funds, another $ 396 million was funding for the project from NASA. An interesting estimate is NASA's 2010 estimate, according to which the development of such a rocket under a government contract would cost the American taxpayers $ 3.97 billion.
It should be noted that today the Falcon 9 launch vehicle, made both in one-time and partially reusable versions, is actively pushing Roskosmos out of the commercial space launch market. Since 2010, 74 launches have already been carried out, only in incomplete 2019, 8 successful rocket launches were carried out, of which 7 launches were accompanied by a successful landing of the first stage, in the last launch the landing of the stage was not carried out. By the end of 2019, the Falcon 9 launch vehicle is due to go into space 5 more times.
Angara missile problems
Experts say that one of the main problems of the Angara launch vehicle is its obsolescence, which is increasing every year. Affected by the long development period, which has been going on since the mid-1990s, when the rocket industry was faced with chronic underfunding of work. During this time, the design and engineering thought went very far ahead, which is perfectly demonstrated by the example of the Falcon 9 rocket, which received a reversible first stage.
The columnist for the newspaper "Vzglyad" Alexander Galkin believes that the "Angara" missile is already "morally obsolete", so it makes no sense to continue attempts to modernize it. In his opinion, the project should have been abandoned 10 years ago. And the best solution would be to focus on the development and production of a rocket of a similar class, the Soyuz-5. Galkin especially noted the lack of intelligible internal tasks for the new Russian missile. In fact, its main customer is the RF Ministry of Defense, which is able to cover all its space needs with lighter missiles, like the Soyuz. For the load that the heavy version of the Angara can put into orbit, there are simply no tasks in Russia.
In the absence of tasks within the country, it would be reasonable to assume that the rocket could interest foreign buyers. But here two problems arise at once - the first is uncertainty and uncertainty. For 25 years of development, the rocket flew only twice, no one is ready to pay for a pig in a poke, without having statistics of raids and confidence in how the new rocket will behave. No one is ready to risk the launch of multibillion-dollar spacecraft. The second problem is the high cost of manufacturing a rocket, which will remain so without improving the manufacturability of production and the deployment of serial production at the level of 6-7 missiles per year.
It is known that the Angara launch vehicle is seen as a replacement for the Proton-M rocket, which is confirmed by the latest press release from Roscosmos. At the same time, the cost of the rocket remains very high. Yuri Koptev, who is the head of the scientific and technical council of Roscosmos, on April 15, 2018, in an interview with Russian media, noted that the cost of the first Angara-A5 rocket was 3.4 billion rubles, which is comparable to the cost of two Proton-M missiles. …According to the corporation's plans, a set of measures aimed at reducing the labor intensity of rocket production and the possibility of carrying out 6-7 launches per year will help reduce the cost of the rocket by about 1.5-2 times, and by 2025 the cost of launching the Proton-M and Angara rockets -A5 will have to equalize and amount to approximately $ 55-58 million. In any case, the cost of the rocket can be reduced only with an increase in production volumes, but so far in Omsk it has not been possible to organize even the production of a light version of the launch vehicle.
Methane fuel and reversible stages
The salvation for the Russian space industry may be reaching a new technical level. If you believe the statements of Dmitry Rogozin (how much you should trust Rogozin's statements, readers can decide on their own), Roscosmos is actively working on two new concepts for the corporation: a special system for returning the launch stages to Earth and a new rocket engine powered by methane fuel. Both technologies promise quite tangible advantages, the only question is whether it will be possible to implement such projects and when it will happen.
The Krylo-SV project, which is a development and rethinking of the Baikal project, which debuted at the Le Bourget air show back in 2001, is considered as a return stage in Russia. In 2018, the Advanced Research Fund said that a subsonic technology demonstrator within the framework of the Krylo-SV launch vehicle recoverable stage project will be created in our country within four years. The specialists of JSC "EMZ named after V. M. Myasishchev" are working on the project. Flight tests of the subsonic version of the device may begin as early as 2020. In the future, an aircraft measuring 6 meters in length and 0.8 meters in diameter will be able to fly at hypersonic speeds - up to Mach 6. The announced dimensions are suitable for the use of the reentry booster together with ultralight missiles. In the future, Krylo-SV will be able to provide reusable use of variations of the Angara 1.1 rocket, but for the medium and heavy version it will be necessary to create a new unit of much larger size and mass. In contrast to the American returnable first stage of the company SpaceX, the Russian project of the returnable launching stage-accelerator will be able to land at airfields "like an airplane".
At the same time, for now, the project revolves around a returnable booster for ultralight rockets. Therefore, experts consider Dmitry Rogozin's statement on the development of reversible stages for new Russian missiles with a fair amount of skepticism. There is no doubt that such devices can be created in Russia, for this there is already an existing groundwork. However, the very process of creating a reversible stage for launch vehicles of a heavy class, the same Angara-A5 missile, if it is still possible to send it into mass production, will have to go a long way of development to a product ready for testing.
The second breakthrough project for astronautics is called a methane-fueled engine. On the whole, several very important and breakthrough ideas for the 1990s were laid down in the Angara launch vehicle: a universal modular structure and the use of an oxygen-kerosene engine. The transition to such engines saved the Russian cosmonautics from using extremely harmful and dangerous fuel - heptyl and amyl oxidizer, which are used on Proton rockets. The use of such fuel requires expensive work to deactivate the drop zones after emergency starts. Taking into account the fact that the rockets are launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome, which remained on the territory of Kazakhstan, this causes certain problems. The fall of the Proton-M rocket in 2007, 40 kilometers from the city of Zhezkazgan, led to a serious scandal and compensation from Russia.
In this regard, the transition to new types of fuel seems to be justified. But now oxygen-kerosene engines are no longer at the forefront of technical thought. Another pair is of greater interest: methane - oxygen. Such fuel is safer, more environmentally friendly, and most importantly, it allows you to get a larger specific impulse - about 380 seconds (heptyl-amyl provided an impulse up to 330 seconds, kerosene and oxygen - up to 350 seconds). Work on the methane engine has been carried out in Russia since 1997, we are talking about the RD-0162 rocket engine. If the work on the creation of a methane rocket engine can be successfully completed, this can also give a serious impetus to the development of the Angara missile project and other domestic rocket systems.
