- "Roscosmos will also stop servicing rocket engines it had previously delivered to the U.S., Rogozin said, adding that the U.S. still had 24 engines that would now be left without Russian technical assistance."
Here's ULA's CEO's response to this threat:
- "We prefer to have them available for consultation in the event that the engine might do something unexpected. But, we have been flying these for years and have developed experience and expertise"
- "United Launch Alliance said Friday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will have no impact on the company’s Atlas 5 rocket program, which has 25 missions left to fly with Russian-made main engines before retirement."
- "“As we manage the transition to the Vulcan launch system, all necessary RD-180 engines to execute the Atlas 5 flyout are safely stored in our factory in Decatur, Alabama,” said Jessica Rye, a ULA spokesperson. “We have agreements for technical support and spares, but if that support is not available, we will still be able to safely and successfully fly out our Atlas program.”"
That's Rogozin saying ULA only has 24 engines, not ULA. As far as I know ULA took the last delivery of RD-180s in April of last year and hasn't ordered any more.
For the Atlas V it is just one RD-180 engine per launch "The Atlas V first stage...is powered by one Energomash RD180 main engine..." [0]. There are additional solid rocket boosters (supplied by Northrup) on the first stage. And Aerojet Rocketdyne provides the engines for the upper stage.
Something about the math still doesn't quite add up though. I wonder if the 24 engines are still the ones sitting on the shelf, while others have already been integrated in to the first stage of the rockets.
The RD180 looks like 2 engines, but it is 1 engine with two combustion chambers. A clever trick to simplify the problem of combustion instability in large combustion chambers!
Rocketdyne's F1 engine which powered the Saturn V spent years solving this problem, and they were never totally confident it would not blow up. I wonder if this would have been a workable solution for apollo!
I always found ULA's reliance on Russian engines absolutely ridiculous. If they don't have their own engines they have no business being a launch provider. Apart from SpaceX, USA's launch capabilities for the past decade are in complete shambles.
My understanding is that we started buying them not because we necessarily needed Russian engines, but because there was worry that the collapse of the USSR would lead to a glut of unemployed Russian rocket engineers who would start offering their services to Iraq/Iran/N Korea/etc.
Dunno how well the program worked in practice, but it seems like a good concept.
Compared to USA setting up facilities on US soil for domestic needs and providing employment to them in those facilities ensuring that they become part of US aerospace infrastructure and bring know-how/self-reliance?
This reasoning never made sense to me. We always could have hired them directly, offer them relocation or simply set up a subsidiary of an American company in Russia to keep them busy.
Don't just assume that people will move at the drop of a hat. Some people are happy to move around in their early adulthood (20s,) but once children and a significant other are involved, moving isn't appealing.
Also, many Russians are happy with typical middle class life in Russia. Since the Soviet Union collapsed, typical middle class life in Russia was very good.
You also have to consider that they don’t want to move to the US specificly due to ideological reasons. How many who don’t currently live in Russia would love to move there if their profession was no longer needed in the US? Same thing applies the other way around.
people act in their own self interest, that doesn't mean self interest is simple
Maybe North Korea offers them more money?
Maybe Russia has a backdoor deal to have their scientists develop something 'for russia' that people know goes out the backdoor to
Maybe Russia forces them to work on things or they will hurt their families.
Maybe Russia won't let them leave and they are going to do worse things for money unless we keep them employed.
Maybe they hate the US and want to work for their enemies
HN often gets very reductive on why people make the decisions they do. Especially when those are related to decisions made by 'traditional' companies and state actors. Lets not assume that the entirety of the US state department and ULA aren't well informed about the decisions they are making.
I read in Command and Control that the Russian government narrowly managed to block a plane full of Russian weapons designers from heading to North Korea during the collapse of the USSR. There were brilliant scientists trying and failing to grow potatoes in their back yard because food was scarce. Moving beats dying of hunger.
On pretty much any metric that matters life is worse for the typical Russian citizen today as compared with before the collapse of the USSR. Educational attainment, lifespan, gender equity, homelessness rates, nutrition
I'm not sure why people bring up that time as if it were somehow worse, turns out selling off all your public institutions to corporations at firesale prices isn't a good foundation for democracy. Many of those oligarchs that made out well became the powerbase of Putin, whom MI6 funded and supported.
Just paying people to keep doing what they're doing is going to be massively easier, and have a lot more uptake, then trying to move everyone over to some new company. Plus there's no guarantee you'd get enough of the original company to actually keep producing engines.
Hiring then would have been outright punishment. America is more about everyone being self sufficient and most importantly, being a good trading partner. We think free trade is essential to prosperity.
Remember that America spent billions of dollars on Europe and Asia after WW2 on reconstruction. Now America has some great allies (Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, etc.) all backed by consistent and reliable trade.
When the USSR collapsed, America was kind of hoping they’d join the club. America literally thinks the club is really cool and everyone should be a part of it.
Buying engines from Russia was about showing how trade is awesome and how both parties could benefit.
America only invested because they thought these countries would turn to communism otherwise. We don't do things out of the goodness of our hearts.
Doesn't seem like we support free trade either when we've had wars over forcing other countries to let us sell Opium to their populace. At other times though like WW2 when our allies asked us to stop selling things to the third Reich all we cared about was free trade. Almost like it's a political football for whatever interests are more relevant to the American ruling class at a given point in time.
The conflict today could have been potentially avoided had the West prioritized a democratic Russia vs one friendly to Western business interests. Instead our intelligence agencies funded and supported Putin, and encouraged him to brutally crack down on dissidents. We reap what we sow. Just a modern-day Pinochet
I am not a rocket expert or anything, but my understanding is that Russian engines back in the early 1990s were more efficient. I remember seeing some kind of documentary on it. I think that it was also cheaper than building American engines, because there was a large stockpile of unused engines in Russia.
The documentary was likely "The Engines that Came in from the Cold." And yeah, those RD-180 engines were a bit shocking to US engineers at first. I suspect there were several reasons that attracted the US to buying them, price being a big one.
The RD-180 is still by many measures the best engine that has been to orbit. SpaceX Raptor is putting up better numbers but so far has only flown short hops and test stands.
As I understand it, it was largely due to the superior efficiency of the Russian engines over the bulk of US engines, at a vastly better price than the US options of the time. Then institutional inertia takes over as switching rocket engines is apparently not just a trivial switch for a rocket design (but IANARS).
Yeah, at least we can say that we did see this coming at some point. It was shortly after the annexation of Crimea that Congress said you need to stop using Russian rocket engines and ULA started working on the Vulcan rocket.
> If they don't have their own engines they have no business being a launch provider
I dont really agree with this line to be honest, making rocket engines is hard, and if you only "deserved" to be in business as a launch provider if you made your own engines, our medium/heavy lift launch capabilities would be even worse than they currently are. There is nothing wrong with buying engines from someone else, Id say its a good way to make sure we have multiple different launch vehicles.
Maybe you have a point with buying them from Russia specifically, but until very recently, it was basically the only sensible option since American made engines didnt really fit the requirements super well. The RD engines are extremely good for what they are.
Only in the last yearish did it make sense to start getting rid of the Russian engines, as we finally have some larger American made ones coming online.
Id love to see more American made engines, but without major government investments, I dont really see it happening outside of SpaceX/Blue Origin.
It's not that they have failed as much as it is a strategic decision. ULA is not doing this by choice, they are doing it (as mentioned) to effectively subsidize the industry in Russia for other diplomatic and security reasons as opposed to technical reasons. [0]
"The [US government] asked us to buy [Russian engines] at the end of the Cold War in order to keep the Russian Rocket Scientists from ending up in North Korea and Iran," ~ tweet from ULA's CEO
ULA is in the process of replacing the russian engines as part of the shift to their Vulcan rocket and away from Atlas. I believe they have all the rockets they need in hand.
ETA: and to be explicit, they are not paying the scientists and engineers directly. They are paying the russian firms doing the work.
They licensed the RD-180 for domestic production, Aerojet/RD/LM whatever took billions in R&D to do it and then punted because they were too lazy or incompetent (probably both) to actually do it.
> If they don't have their own engines they have no business being a launch provider
Until recently, SpaceX was generally the exception as a more vertically integrated company that makes their own engines. Not that it is necessarily a better or worse position (although Russian engines is probably the worse position) but it is common for launch providers
Delta IV: Aerojet Rocketdyne engines
Atlas V: Russian, Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrup (formerly ATK) engines
Pegasus: Okay, this one is all one company now, but that is because Orbital and ATK merged (and then got bought by Northrup)
Russia pretty much spit in Musks face, so I'm 99.99% sure he's not dependant on them at all. Does he need other foreign suppliers, no idea, but I do know most of their engine components are milled/manufactured here in the US.
For more aspects of this, Scott Manley talked extensively about how Russia's invasion of Ukraine will have a large affect on the industry as a whole: https://youtu.be/1V-lj-jCqe8
Edit: TL;DR off the top of my head:
- Lots of parts from Russia, some from Ukraine. Mostly in older designs that are planned to be phased out, but whose replacements aren't ready yet.
- Russia can't really take their part of the ISS. All of the systems for moving the modules have been disabled, and they don't have the system to self sustain. At most they could disconnect and de-orbit it, as just a middle finger to the West. They are actively using the ISS for science and selling tourist seats, so it's unlikely they will want to abandon it.
- Re-boosting the ISS is of notable but minor concern. Only Russia has the capability to do it right now. Another company is developing means to do so, but isn't ready yet. SpaceX's dragon could do it, but it would require a software update and the thrusters are poorly positioned so it'd be inefficient. However the ISS also has years before this would be a problem, so no major concern at this time, but developing the capability should be a top priority.
"Back on Earth tension between the United States and the Soviet Union escalates to the brink of war, and the Americans are ordered to leave the Leonov and move to the Discovery, with communication with each other forbidden except in an emergency."
Not much of an impact. ULA is pretty much done with RD-180 engines (they have a handful sitting in a warehouse, but weren't planning on buying any more).
Northrop might have a hard time if they plan on launching more Antares rockets, but it's already a pretty low volume launch vehicle, and IIRC it used to use a non-Russian engine anyways.
Years ago, there were basically two commercial markets: Low Earth Orbit (LEO) (below ~500km altitude) and Geosynchronous (GEO) (35,000km altitude).
Because GEO sats stay in the same place in the sky relative to the ground*, they're great for communications companies, since the satellite is always overhead. They're also really far away, so they can serve entire regions of the planet at once. Also because they're so far away, they have historically been very expensive to launch (the farther from Earth you are, the more propellant it takes). Because it's more expensive, companies have engineered their GEO satellites to last for a very long time - typically 15-20 years. There are only so many slots available for GEO satellites (for too many reasons to mention here). The valuable slots, where the majority of the Earth's population can see them, are almost always full, so the GEO market tends to go in waves with the lifetime of the satellites. Over the past couple of years, we've been in a lull, with not too many GEO satellites being needed, built, or launched.
For LEO, historically most of the commercial satellites were earth-observation, whether they were weather satellites, or special purpose communications satellites (Iridium, for instance). Most of the LEO market was for government agencies, either surveillance or science.
Recently, the LEO market has exploded, particularly for smaller satellites. Starting with SpaceX, and then Rocket Lab following, with several other companies in the past couple of years, the cost to launch things to LEO has gone way down (SpaceX has lowered launch costs to all available orbits, but most small organizations don't want to launch to GEO). If you are an organization that wants to launch a small satellite, you have a great selection of launch providers, many from the US. However, if your satellite has a mass > a ton or so, then your launch provider selection goes way down.
In the US, the only launch providers nominally capable of this are SpaceX, ULA, Northrup Grumman, and Blue Origin. SpaceX is obviously capable and launching as frequently as possible. ULA has two operative rockets (Delta IV and Atlas V), however both of these rockets are being retired, with no more vehicles planned to be made. I would guess that even the tooling for the Delta IV has been destroyed, which would mean that the rocket is truly gone. I don't know whether the Atlas V is in the same state, but even if it was possible to build a new one, the engines themselves are Russian, which is the topic of this thread.
ULA is building a replacement vehicle capable of flying all of the mission profiles that the Delta and Atlas vehicles were taking on, and it's called the Vulcan. However, it's designed with the BE-4 engine provided by Blue Origin. Although the ULA president is publicly optimistic, Blue Origin is very far behind schedule on delivering flight-ready engines, and I don't know of a high-confidence projection for when the engines will be ready and delivered, or even what the state of the Vulcan vehicle will be once they're ready. Most people don't think it will happen this year, and given the typical methodical tendencies of ULA, even if they were delivered today, a flight would be unlikely this year, in my opinion.
Blue Origin themselves are working on the New Glenn rocket, which will also be capable of flying all of the commercial mission profiles, but the actual delivery date is completely up in the air. The only hardware we've seen publicly from them is a fit-test mockup of the rocket. Nobody outside (or probably inside) knows when the vehicle will launch.
As for Northup Grumman, they only make the Antares rocket, and it seemingly only exists to fly the Cygnus resupply spacecraft to the ISS. The Antares also uses a Russian engine. An Antares rocket suffered an explosion on lift-off in 2014, and during the investigatory period, they flew the Cygnus on the Atlas V, which is no long...
Also mentioned in the article is the demand on OneWeb to both guarantee non military usage of their constellation and for the British government to divest (OneWeb went bankrupt a few years ago and the British government rescued it, becoming majority owner). The difference here is that there was a launch about to happen, close to 40 satellites already on the rocket
Yes. There was information in russian news that the satellites are ”under arrest” because UK is a state ”hostile to Russia” and OneWeb is partly owned by UK.
58 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] threadHere's ULA's CEO's response to this threat:
- "We prefer to have them available for consultation in the event that the engine might do something unexpected. But, we have been flying these for years and have developed experience and expertise"
https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1498381441817886724
- "United Launch Alliance said Friday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will have no impact on the company’s Atlas 5 rocket program, which has 25 missions left to fly with Russian-made main engines before retirement."
- "“As we manage the transition to the Vulcan launch system, all necessary RD-180 engines to execute the Atlas 5 flyout are safely stored in our factory in Decatur, Alabama,” said Jessica Rye, a ULA spokesperson. “We have agreements for technical support and spares, but if that support is not available, we will still be able to safely and successfully fly out our Atlas program.”"
https://spaceflightnow.com/2022/02/25/ula-says-russias-invas...
Something about the math still doesn't quite add up though. I wonder if the 24 engines are still the ones sitting on the shelf, while others have already been integrated in to the first stage of the rockets.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V#Vehicle_description
Edit: It's also a bit odd because one RD-180 engine actually has two nozzles.
Rocketdyne's F1 engine which powered the Saturn V spent years solving this problem, and they were never totally confident it would not blow up. I wonder if this would have been a workable solution for apollo!
Also, many Russians are happy with typical middle class life in Russia. Since the Soviet Union collapsed, typical middle class life in Russia was very good.
Same reason why they won't move to Iran or N Korea.
Maybe North Korea offers them more money?
Maybe Russia has a backdoor deal to have their scientists develop something 'for russia' that people know goes out the backdoor to
Maybe Russia forces them to work on things or they will hurt their families.
Maybe Russia won't let them leave and they are going to do worse things for money unless we keep them employed.
Maybe they hate the US and want to work for their enemies
HN often gets very reductive on why people make the decisions they do. Especially when those are related to decisions made by 'traditional' companies and state actors. Lets not assume that the entirety of the US state department and ULA aren't well informed about the decisions they are making.
I'm not sure why people bring up that time as if it were somehow worse, turns out selling off all your public institutions to corporations at firesale prices isn't a good foundation for democracy. Many of those oligarchs that made out well became the powerbase of Putin, whom MI6 funded and supported.
The West creates its own monsters
India has better average wages than Russia.
Remember that America spent billions of dollars on Europe and Asia after WW2 on reconstruction. Now America has some great allies (Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, etc.) all backed by consistent and reliable trade.
When the USSR collapsed, America was kind of hoping they’d join the club. America literally thinks the club is really cool and everyone should be a part of it.
Buying engines from Russia was about showing how trade is awesome and how both parties could benefit.
Doesn't seem like we support free trade either when we've had wars over forcing other countries to let us sell Opium to their populace. At other times though like WW2 when our allies asked us to stop selling things to the third Reich all we cared about was free trade. Almost like it's a political football for whatever interests are more relevant to the American ruling class at a given point in time.
The conflict today could have been potentially avoided had the West prioritized a democratic Russia vs one friendly to Western business interests. Instead our intelligence agencies funded and supported Putin, and encouraged him to brutally crack down on dissidents. We reap what we sow. Just a modern-day Pinochet
NASA was born in large part from all the German scientist and engineers we wiped after the war.
If these scientists are mostly happy in Russia, neither applies.
I dont really agree with this line to be honest, making rocket engines is hard, and if you only "deserved" to be in business as a launch provider if you made your own engines, our medium/heavy lift launch capabilities would be even worse than they currently are. There is nothing wrong with buying engines from someone else, Id say its a good way to make sure we have multiple different launch vehicles.
Maybe you have a point with buying them from Russia specifically, but until very recently, it was basically the only sensible option since American made engines didnt really fit the requirements super well. The RD engines are extremely good for what they are.
Only in the last yearish did it make sense to start getting rid of the Russian engines, as we finally have some larger American made ones coming online.
Id love to see more American made engines, but without major government investments, I dont really see it happening outside of SpaceX/Blue Origin.
"The [US government] asked us to buy [Russian engines] at the end of the Cold War in order to keep the Russian Rocket Scientists from ending up in North Korea and Iran," ~ tweet from ULA's CEO
ULA is in the process of replacing the russian engines as part of the shift to their Vulcan rocket and away from Atlas. I believe they have all the rockets they need in hand.
ETA: and to be explicit, they are not paying the scientists and engineers directly. They are paying the russian firms doing the work.
[0] https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/US_Rocketry_Chief_Offers_...
They licensed the RD-180 for domestic production, Aerojet/RD/LM whatever took billions in R&D to do it and then punted because they were too lazy or incompetent (probably both) to actually do it.
https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2014/7/1/20...
They then went and asked for more money to use Bezos’ BE-4. Tell us how that has worked out…
Until recently, SpaceX was generally the exception as a more vertically integrated company that makes their own engines. Not that it is necessarily a better or worse position (although Russian engines is probably the worse position) but it is common for launch providers
Delta IV: Aerojet Rocketdyne engines
Atlas V: Russian, Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrup (formerly ATK) engines
Pegasus: Okay, this one is all one company now, but that is because Orbital and ATK merged (and then got bought by Northrup)
Ariane 5: Safran Aircraft, Snecma
Everything has changed during the last 20 years.
More generally, we should be looking to eliminate technological dependence on autocratic countries across the board (China, Russia, et al).
Loose ties on the other hand lower the barrier for countries to initiate a war.
Hopefully Blue Origin is able to actually produce an engine soon for some competition in the liquid fueled rocket market.
Edit: TL;DR off the top of my head:
"Back on Earth tension between the United States and the Soviet Union escalates to the brink of war, and the Americans are ordered to leave the Leonov and move to the Discovery, with communication with each other forbidden except in an emergency."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010:_The_Year_We_Make_Contact
Northrop might have a hard time if they plan on launching more Antares rockets, but it's already a pretty low volume launch vehicle, and IIRC it used to use a non-Russian engine anyways.
Years ago, there were basically two commercial markets: Low Earth Orbit (LEO) (below ~500km altitude) and Geosynchronous (GEO) (35,000km altitude).
Because GEO sats stay in the same place in the sky relative to the ground*, they're great for communications companies, since the satellite is always overhead. They're also really far away, so they can serve entire regions of the planet at once. Also because they're so far away, they have historically been very expensive to launch (the farther from Earth you are, the more propellant it takes). Because it's more expensive, companies have engineered their GEO satellites to last for a very long time - typically 15-20 years. There are only so many slots available for GEO satellites (for too many reasons to mention here). The valuable slots, where the majority of the Earth's population can see them, are almost always full, so the GEO market tends to go in waves with the lifetime of the satellites. Over the past couple of years, we've been in a lull, with not too many GEO satellites being needed, built, or launched.
For LEO, historically most of the commercial satellites were earth-observation, whether they were weather satellites, or special purpose communications satellites (Iridium, for instance). Most of the LEO market was for government agencies, either surveillance or science.
Recently, the LEO market has exploded, particularly for smaller satellites. Starting with SpaceX, and then Rocket Lab following, with several other companies in the past couple of years, the cost to launch things to LEO has gone way down (SpaceX has lowered launch costs to all available orbits, but most small organizations don't want to launch to GEO). If you are an organization that wants to launch a small satellite, you have a great selection of launch providers, many from the US. However, if your satellite has a mass > a ton or so, then your launch provider selection goes way down.
In the US, the only launch providers nominally capable of this are SpaceX, ULA, Northrup Grumman, and Blue Origin. SpaceX is obviously capable and launching as frequently as possible. ULA has two operative rockets (Delta IV and Atlas V), however both of these rockets are being retired, with no more vehicles planned to be made. I would guess that even the tooling for the Delta IV has been destroyed, which would mean that the rocket is truly gone. I don't know whether the Atlas V is in the same state, but even if it was possible to build a new one, the engines themselves are Russian, which is the topic of this thread.
ULA is building a replacement vehicle capable of flying all of the mission profiles that the Delta and Atlas vehicles were taking on, and it's called the Vulcan. However, it's designed with the BE-4 engine provided by Blue Origin. Although the ULA president is publicly optimistic, Blue Origin is very far behind schedule on delivering flight-ready engines, and I don't know of a high-confidence projection for when the engines will be ready and delivered, or even what the state of the Vulcan vehicle will be once they're ready. Most people don't think it will happen this year, and given the typical methodical tendencies of ULA, even if they were delivered today, a flight would be unlikely this year, in my opinion.
Blue Origin themselves are working on the New Glenn rocket, which will also be capable of flying all of the commercial mission profiles, but the actual delivery date is completely up in the air. The only hardware we've seen publicly from them is a fit-test mockup of the rocket. Nobody outside (or probably inside) knows when the vehicle will launch.
As for Northup Grumman, they only make the Antares rocket, and it seemingly only exists to fly the Cygnus resupply spacecraft to the ISS. The Antares also uses a Russian engine. An Antares rocket suffered an explosion on lift-off in 2014, and during the investigatory period, they flew the Cygnus on the Atlas V, which is no long...