| Submit your comments on this article |
| International-UN-NGOs |
| Thought's to consider before running to produce Russa's RD-180 Rocket Motor in the USA |
| 2014-05-04 |
| The article is from February before the whole mess with sanctions and the Ukraine blew up. Now ULA and LM are lobbying for domestic production of the Russian rocket engine used the the Atlas 5 rocket. This is also the subject brought out in SpaceX's recent lawsuit against ULA/LM/Boeing/USAF/and the black hats who need the rockets. US considers launching production of Russian rocket engines The US Air Force is studying the possibility of launching the licensed production of Russian RD-180 rocket engines in the United States. According to the Space News weekly, the US will begin assessing the licensed production of such engines in the next few weeks. Life for the Energomash Corporation The Russian-made RD-180 rocket engine is one of the few high-tech Russian products that are in demand in the United States. The engines are manufactured by the Energomash Russian power engineering corporation. In the United States, the RD Amross joint venture adapts the engines for use in the heavy Atlas-V launch systems. RD-180 is one half of the RD-170 four-nozzle engine, which was designed for the first stage of the Energiaheavy-lift expandable launch system decades ago. In 1996, the RD-180 project won the tender for developing and delivering the first stage engine for an updated PH Atlas rocket, manufactured by the US Lockheed Martin Corporation. The development of the engine, based on the series-produced RD-170/171, helped Energomash survive the hardest years for Russian rocket-building companies, - from the mid-1990s to the mid-zeros. An agreement was signed in 1997 on the delivery to the United States of 101 RD-180 engines until the end of 2018. By late last year, Energomash had supplied to the US more than 70 rocket engines for 10 million dollars each, which accounted for a sizeable part of the corporationÂ’s revenues, - more than a third, according to some estimates. Given that the supply of engines to the home market yielded hardly any profit at the time, it is safe to claim that the RD-180 programme kept the corporation out of bankruptcy. Political complications The agreement with the United States has been performed by 75%, however, the US is not about to stop using its Atlas rockets, which will call for extending the agreement. But Russia considered the cessation of deliveries of RD-180 engines to the United States in summer 2013 since the US has been using its Atlas-V launch systems to place defence-related devices into orbit. Although no decision was made to that end, the very fact that Russia considered the stopping of supplies prompted the US to overhaul its space launch programme. According to one option, Washington could launch the series licensed production of RD-180 in the United States. But the option obviously suffers from a couple of flaws, namely the cost of the engine is estimated to grow by approximately 50% and, secondly, a licensed agreement per se and the supply of key engine components from Russia call for trust-based relations between the two countries. The full-cycle production of RD-180 in the United States would prove a guarantee against any risks, of course, but Russia is hardly prepared to accept that and, besides, the expenditures will be comparable to the spending on the designing of a new engine. But nor will Russia stand to gain by ending the deliveries of the RD-180 engine to the US, since Washington will find some other engine to replace this one sooner than Energomash will be able to raise funds to survive. The Russian space programme could keep Energomash afloat only by increasing the annual number of space launches to six or seven despite the fact that some 30 rockets blast off from Russian space centres every year. But the situation could improve due to the recently launched reform of the space industry, whereby Russia is due to launch a lot more rockets in the interests of Russian customers, both civilian and military. Anybody want to place odds on this ending up in the very political WTO and the US losing? It's a nasty problem. The easy solution is to use Delta rockets (Boeing) for the big jobs (Since SpaceX hasn't flown it's F9Heavy yet) and a mixture of Delta's and Falcon9s for the rest of the launches after ULA runs out of RD-180s for the Atlas. To make matters worse it is looking in arguments made after the SpaceX lawsuit that if the Atlas rockets are only used for the key launches ULA will not be profitable and in deep trouble. ULA is hampered by it's unique creation out of LM and Boeing rocket divisions at the behest of the AirForce. It has some very strange constraining rules on what it can and can't do in regards to LM, Boeing, RD-Amross and PW. It's rules could be enough to kill its ability to respond to this crisis created out of two current primary factors. The first factor is the Russian Sanctions (Ukraine). The second trying to avoid competition by what appears to casual outside observers to be shell game type maneuvers with the AirForce to avoid awarding any contracts for any EELV launches to SpaceX. This to keep it profitable for ULA? (the lawsuit will determine the accuracy of this viewpoint) The judge has issued an injunction against buying RD-180 parts and kit as the contact person in Russia is named in Obama's Sanctions as an individual to be sanctioned. It's complicated further as the Atlas and Falcon9 are Man Rated and the Atlas is nuke rated but the Delta is not Man Rated. The two competitors to SpaceX for commercial manned space flight are being designed to fly on an Atlas. The big SLS booster intended for Mars and beyond manned flight by NASA is currently playing with using RD series Russian engines so only SpaceX has fully domestic production of a man rated craft. Next year the SpaceX Falcon Heavy should launch with it's ability to lift 53 metric tons to Low Earth Orbit (about 2/3s a Saturn 5 moon rocket's and more than 2 times the Space Shuttle's throw weight). It will be Man Rated and could take a craft to Mars... but Elon Musk (SpaceXs owner) would prefer to wait for his BFRs (Big F Rockets) on the drawing board. One, planed to be reusable and having Methane/Oxygen engines has a throw weight of between 300mt and 600mt - about 2X to 4X the largest's disposable Government designed SLS Rocket. It is being specified to take 100 astronauts at a time to Mars as Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars. |
| Posted by:3dc |
#2 An expert got back to me on the WTO questionThere will be no WTO involvement, national security is specifically exempted from WTO review. Article XXI: the security exception in states that a country can not be stopped from taking any action it considers necessary to protect its essential security interests; actions "relating to the traffic in arms, ammunition and implements of war and such traffic in other goods and materials as is carried on directly for the purpose of supplying a military establishment (or) taken in time of war or other emergency in international relations." The reality of the situation is NPO Energomash has ULA by the you know what while at the same the US Defense Department has NPO Energomash in a huge bind. If the US DoD ever decides to throw ULA under the bus Energomash is in big trouble. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2014-05-04 15:49 |
| #1 Here's a fun fact for ya to consider if you're going to throw around terms like "man rated:" * The shuttle was never man rated. * The Atlas, Titan, and Saturn rockets used in Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo weren't man-rated by modern regulatory definitions of the term. * Only by writing the regulations to conform to the rocket could the Ares 1 have even remotely been considered man-rated. Same for the Ares IV. Their thrust termination systems would be problematic. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2014-05-04 15:12 |