This article will focus on the development of domestic cosmonautics, or rather, even on the development potential, which could be used more successfully by us than by the Americans. So, the American Atlas V rocket, which launched the newest orbital plane of the X-37B states, into orbit, flies on Russian RD-180 engines. The unmanned vehicle was launched into space on April 22, 2010 and, having spent 244 days in orbit, returned to earth. The Pentagon carefully keeps the secret regarding the functionality and capabilities of this device, but a number of experts believe that it was originally designed to destroy the satellite groupings of a potential enemy.
However, the presence of a cargo compartment on the ship allows us to conclude that the X-37B is a universal device and can act not only as a fighter, but also as a bomber. This assumption is quite logical, considering that a nuclear missile launched from 200 km. orbit, will fly up to the target much faster than launched from missile bases or even on board a nuclear submarine. Any missile defense system that simply does not have time to react will be powerless before such a launch. One way or another, the capabilities of this device seem to be very broad, and it is unlikely that the United States will limit them to just one function. An unmanned strategic bomber maneuvering in orbit, unattainable for air defense, is the dream of any army in the world. Its only drawback is its attachment to the cosmodrome and the high cost of launching - such is the price for invulnerability.
X-37B after landing
One way or another, it turns out that modern US military equipment goes into orbit using engines produced in our country. In fact, Russia itself is arming its potential adversary. Therefore, the supply of RD-180 engines to the United States is subject to export control, which is one of the most important elements of ensuring the country's security. However, after heated discussions, Russia joined the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR, created by the G7 countries in 1987) in 1993 and should be guided by its principles.
It is clear that the MTCR was intended to control the proliferation of missile technology not between its member countries, but outside the organization. At present, the principles of the organization contain only information that the parties "must take into account the possibility of their developments falling into the hands of individual terrorists or terrorist groups." And there is a list of countries that, according to the US, may be related to terrorists. It is because of this that Iran at one time did not receive the S-300 complexes. However, the task of ensuring the country's security should in any case come first and not depend on the direction of export.
In general, the question of exporting engines to the United States seems strange, does this country really not have its own technologies? It has, however, a number of subtleties here. America only buys technology for heavy rocket motors, which can put a decent mass of payload into orbit. In particular, the RD-180 engine, which was obtained by a simple truncation of the older RD-170 engine. Unlike the RD-170, which has 4 combustion chambers, the RD-180 has only 2. The resulting two-chamber rocket engine is 11% less efficient, but at the same time it is 2 times lighter and can be used on medium-sized rockets. And that's not all, once again halving it, domestic engineers received a single-chamber RD-191, which was designed for the family of new Russian carrier rockets "Angara"
The Soviet RD-170 had a thrust of 740 tons at sea level, a record exceeding the thrust of the famous F-1 engine (690 tons), which was used for the rockets that sent the Apollo to the moon. The lunar program of NASA itself still raises doubts among many, including because the analysis of the design characteristics of the F-1 engine showed that it, in principle, cannot develop the declared thrust.
And after the launch of the Apollo, the production of these engines did not receive further development. Russia is still ahead of the United States in heavy rocket technology. The most significant achievement of the states can be considered only the RS-68 engine with a thrust of 300 tons at sea level, which is used on heavy Delta-IV missiles. It is because of this that the United States is forced to use powder boosters (like on the Shuttle) to launch large cargoes into orbit, or buy engines from us. Moreover, in 1996 they even bought out a license for the production of RD-180 engines, but they could not establish their production at home and still buy them from the Russian manufacturer NPO Energomash. The states have now purchased 30 of these engines and are looking to buy a hundred more. But that's not all. The United States is going to use Russian NK-33 engines for its Taurus-2 rocket, which were designed in the USSR for its own lunar program 40 years ago.
In the United States, over the past 15 years, they have been diligently trying to replicate the NK-33 based on our technical documentation, which was received openly, bought up and stolen, but they did not succeed. After that, they decided to manufacture the engine in our company, and then sell someone else's product, according to the same scheme as with the RD-180 engine.
RD-180
Astronautics is a rather costly industry that cannot ensure self-sufficiency, even despite participation in international programs and commercial launches. If the state does not buy rockets and engines for them, production is idle and aging, workers do not receive wages. Plants, in order to survive, start looking for customers abroad and find them in the face of former competitors. This is how our military-industrial complex survived, selling planes and tanks, our cosmonautics also survives, providing the ISS with the necessary equipment, the main modules of the station are Russian, but Americans fly there more often, respectively, and they attribute the main merits to themselves.
The problem of survival in a market economy has put our enterprises, which have no competitors in the world market, in a unique situation. Now they are not competing with the Americans at all, but with themselves. After the collapse of the USSR, a large number of enterprises that were engaged in deliveries for space programs were corporatized and left to themselves. In the absence of orders from the state, many of them were completely closed, some are on the verge of bankruptcy, some, such as NPO Energomash, were more fortunate. They began selling the RD-180 engine to the American market. Its former partner in the Energia-Buran project, RSC Energia, now earns money by participating in the ISS project, its Zvezda and Zarya modules are the core of the space station, fully providing its life support and control.
In fact, the American segments and modules of other countries can simply be undocked, and Russia will again receive its full space station. The reason for the start of such discussions was the US intention to withdraw from the project in 2015. Their Space Shuttle shuttles are gradually aging, their service life is exhausted. All shuttles will soon be decommissioned. After that, only Russian Soyuz will be involved in the delivery of cargo and crew to the ISS. Delivery of crews and cargo to the ISS has been and will remain the core business of RSC Energia
NASA, however, has its own plans in this regard. In particular, the use of its new Taurus-2 rocket, developed by the Orbital Sciences company, to deliver cargo to the ISS. A contract worth $ 1.9 billion has already been signed, but the rocket has never been tested. In addition, it will receive Russian NK-33 engines, and the entire first stage for this missile is made at the Ukrainian state enterprise Yuzhmash GKB (Dnepropetrovsk). Officially, it turns out that the engine supplier is the Aerojet company, the carrier supplier is Orbital Sciences. Perhaps NASA should have tried to negotiate directly, rather than looking for intermediaries in their country, it would have been cheaper.
Tauras-2 is essentially a Russian-Ukrainian rocket capable of putting 5 tons of cargo into orbit; its American predecessor, Tauras-1, could only lift 1.3 tons, and not always successfully. You can even afford a pun - "Orbital Sciences" became more "orbital" only thanks to the NK-33 engine developed by Kuznetsov, which has a 40-year exposure. In a certain scenario, it was possible to send Orbital Sciences further away and use the Russian-Ukrainian Zenit missile or the almost finished Russian Angara. But this is how the prestige of American technology is lost, and it costs money and intermediaries. At present, the Samara enterprise sells engines to the Americans at $ 1 million apiece, has already sold 40 engines from old stocks, which Kuznetsov had made, and are already thinking about increasing prices, looking at how Energomash is selling RD-180 at 6 million dollars.
However, let's get back to RSC Energia. This company has a second source of income, the company participated in the international Sea Launch project. The main idea of the project was to make the most of the planet's rotation speed. Starting in the equator zone turns out to be the most economical option in terms of energy costs. According to this indicator, Baikonur, with its latitude of 45.6 degrees, loses even to the American cosmodrome at Cape Canaveral with a latitude of 28 degrees. The Sea Launch project consists of the Odyssey floating cosmodrome and the Zenit-3Sl rocket, which are jointly produced by RSC Energia and the Yuzhmash State Design Bureau. At the same time, Russia owns 25% of the shares, Ukraine - 15%, the American Boeing Commercial Space Comp - 40% and another 20% Aker Kværner - a Norwegian shipbuilding company that took part in the construction of a platform for a floating cosmodrome.
The last launch of the shuttle Discovery
Initially, the cost of this project was estimated at $ 3.5 billion. Sea Launch started operating in 1999, and by April 2009, 30 launches had been made under the program, of which 27 were successful, 1 was partially successful and only 2 were unsuccessful. But despite the rather impressive statistics, on June 22, 2009, the company was forced to file for bankruptcy and its financial reorganization in accordance with the US bankruptcy code. According to the data disseminated by the company, its assets are estimated at $ 100-500 million, and debts range from $ 500 million to $ 1 billion.
As it turned out, in order to be profitable, it was necessary to carry out 4-5 launches per year, and not 3, as the company did. Boeing, having pumped out all the technologies from the project, decided to return to itself all the money spent on the project, although the commercial risks, in theory, should have been divided proportionally. Now there is a trial on this matter.
The saddest thing is that there is strong competition between our enterprises. Roughly speaking, Energomash's projects may interfere with Energia's trade with the United States. At the same time, the interests of the country fade into the background, these are the principles of modern business. Trying to convey to him that it is easier to survive in a multidisciplinary integrated structure is very difficult. Such a business cannot see beyond its own nose. Someday the US interest in Energomash's engines will fade away, and the enterprise will not be able to exist without support from overseas. It exists as long as Russian cosmonautics exists, and the Americans have an interest in our engines, as long as they fly into Soyuz orbit and as long as the ISS depends on RSC Energia. There will be no RSC Energia, there will be no Soyuz, no ISS, and there will be no ISS, there will be no interest in engines from the United States, our business officials cannot build such long chains.
However, the problem did not go unnoticed by the authorities, which decided to integrate our enterprises with each other. For this, the head of RSC Energia, Vitaly Lopota, made a lot of efforts. The response to his appeals was the decision to accelerate the creation of the Russian Space Corporation, although according to the plans of Roscosmos, the merger of RSC Energia, NPO Energomash, TsSKB-Progress and Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering, which should form the corporation, was planned year 2012. However, the process will be accelerated.
The topic of competition between enterprises in the space industry would be incomplete without mentioning TsSKB-Progress. Previously, TsSKB-Progress produced the entire line of R-7 launch vehicles from Vostok to Soyuz, and now it provides delivery of crews and cargo to the ISS using Soyuz-U and Soyuz-FG launch vehicles. In this regard, the cooperation between RSC Energia, which produces spaceships, and TsSKB-Progress, which produces rockets, seems logical. It is only worth noting an interesting detail: the first Soyuz-U took off on May 18, 1973, and since then 714 launches have been carried out in 38 years!
Rarely is it possible to find an example of such longevity in technology. At the first stage of this rocket, the RD-117 engine is installed, which is an upgrade of the RD-107, which has been produced since 1957, even Gagarin made his first flight with these engines. It can be noted that the technical progress at TsSKB-Progress is standing still, or it can be assumed that all the technical geniuses of astronautics worked only 40 years ago, and then a pestilence fell upon them, new ones, unfortunately, were not born.
However, now TsSKB-Progress is still making a new Soyuz-2 launch vehicle and a family of missiles based on it. However, RD-107A from Soyuz-FG (thrust 85, 6 tf at sea level) is declared as the first stage engines - this is another modernization of the old RD-107, which was carried out from 1993 to 2001. However, already in the Soyuz-2.1v version, the NK-33 is used (180 tf thrust at sea level). NK-33 became popular in Russia after the Americans bought it. The engine received its calling only 40 years after its creation. Unfortunately, its designer, academician Kuznetsov, never lived to see this moment.
However, back to the main topic - competition. "TsSKB-Progress" was no exception and also began to cooperate with foreign corporations, finding sponsors in their person. On November 7, 2003, in Paris, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Boris Aleshin and French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin signed a Russian-French agreement on the launch of Soyuz carrier rockets from the Kourou cosmodrome in French Guiana. The project turned out to be mutually beneficial, the EU received an excellent middle-class rocket, and Russia received a package of contracts for several years ahead and the ability to carry out space launches from the equator.
Sea Launch with Zenit-3SL rocket
Due to the fact that the cosmodrome is located at the equator, the Soyuz-STK rocket is capable of launching cargo weighing up to 4 tons into orbit, instead of 1.5 tons when launched from Plesetsk or Baikonur. However, the Europeans also launch their Ariane-5 from the Kuru cosmodrome, and do you think Soyuz will compete with Ariane in commercial launches? Of course not, our rockets will launch cargo weighing up to 3 tons into orbit, while Ariane is heavier satellites weighing up to 6 tons. Here, Soyuz will most likely compete with our Zenit missile and the Sea Launch program, which is also launched from the equator and has a similar load. It turns out that TsSKB-Progress is competing with its partner RSC Energia.
If we talk about the independent successes of the Europeans, then their aforementioned masterpiece of thought "Arian" flies on Vulkan2 engines, which have a thrust of 91.8 tons at sea level, almost two times less than that of the NK-33, which are put on " Soyuz-2v ". So why is the European rocket lifting more? Only due to 2 solid-fuel boosters (TTU), the same ones are used on the shuttle. But TTU has a number of serious drawbacks.
First, the fuel tank is also a combustion chamber, so its walls must withstand very serious temperatures and pressures. Hence the use of thick heat-resistant steel, and this is extra weight where they fight for every gram. In addition, the TTU does not have the ability to control the thrust, which practically excludes the possibility of maneuvering in the active section of the trajectory, such an accelerator cannot be turned off after ignition, and the combustion process cannot be slowed down. Experts estimate the likelihood of a shuttle disaster due to problems with it as 1 in 35, the Challenger exploded on its 10th flight. Therefore, Europeans and Americans do not use them for a good life, they simply do not have powerful enough engines. Let's move on from TTU to another topic of our "cooperation" - the "Baikal" project.
"Baikal" is a domestic accelerator with a liquid-propellant rocket engine RD-191M (thrust 196 tf). But this is not the only difference from solid fuel accelerators. "Baikal", just like them, can dock to a rocket, but after working off the fuel, it would return to the nearest airfield in unmanned mode, like an ordinary plane. Thus, in fact, this is a reusable rocket module, in which standard aviation technologies were used, such as the RD-33 turbojet engine from the MiG-29 and the chassis from the MiG-23, which reduced its cost.
Reusable accelerator "Baikal"
That is why when NPO Molniya and GKNPTs them. Khrunichev was presented with a full-size model of "Baikal" at the MAKS-2001 air show, the Europeans showed an increased interest in him. However, in this case, cooperation did not work out. Here comes the saddest moment for the Russian cosmonautics, NPO Molniya - the main developer of Baikal - simply did not live to see the start of funding. The irreversible process of the collapse of production began, the workers left, the machines were sent for scrap metal, the empty buildings were rented out. This is the sacrifice for liberal reforms. The organization that developed the "Buran", which possesses modern technologies, was unable to adapt to the market economy. Russia did not need the Burans, for a long time the company tried to survive by developing a project for a lightweight version of the MAKS shuttle, but it remained unclaimed. In military terms, it could become a direct competitor to the X-37B, the very American apparatus from which the article began. Perhaps, it is worth finishing it with orbital planes, suffice it to note that Russia did not need MAKS, and in America the X-37B is in demand and is flying.
